


like setting off fire crackers at midnight

by what_alchemy



Series: Sparklers on the Fourth of July [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Fanboy Phil Coulson, Genderbending, M/M, Period-Typical Sexism, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, gender misdirection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-29 14:31:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone who knows the Captain America story thinks they know the Bucky Barnes story. In the 21st century, Steve is still keeping Bucky's secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like setting off fire crackers at midnight

Steve had exactly one picture of Bucky Barnes, and Phil Coulson was the one who’d given it to him. 

Three months after the Chitauri attack on New York, one month after Fury deigned to tell the team that Phil still counted amongst the living, Phil was convalescing and Steve had taken to visiting him down on his floor. Phil was the one who helped Steve figure out his Stark tablet — the Starklet, though Steve hated to call it that because it made him think of hundreds of tiny Tonys running around getting greasy fingerprints everywhere and blowing things up. Phil was the one who’d filled Steve in on the end of the war, and the military history of the US in the intervening years. Phil was the one who’d explained the civil rights movement, and Stonewall, and Roe v. Wade. 

Phil shared a floor in the Tower with Clint. No one said anything about it around Steve, but Steve thought maybe Phil and Clint were an item. Sleeping through Stonewall or not, he knew better than a lot of people about the need for discretion. Steve was gonna keep Phil’s secret. He was good at that.

Steve usually visited Phil when Clint was reporting for duty at SHIELD headquarters. Steve got the feeling Phil’s entire career had been built on looking deceptively inert and unthreatening, but sitting around Stark Tower while his body slowly knit itself back together was driving him up the wall. His talks with Steve helped him feel a little less useless, and Steve felt no need to stop them, even when he could Google on his own and make Pepper laugh with a reference to the Princess Bride. If he were honest with himself, and he liked to be, Steve could admit that Phil helped ease his own loneliness, just a little bit.

The morning of Bucky’s birthday, though, Steve didn’t know whether he wanted to hole up alone in his room with his sketchpad or go sit on Phil’s couch watching one of those strange shows Phil liked where everyone pretended what was being filmed was real life. Phil understood about not having to fill up silences — that was another thing Steve liked about him. 

He definitely didn’t want to talk shop with the team — Fury had them tracking the world’s most elusive assassin, a Russian operative called the Winter Soldier who had recently been spotted on American soil. And even though Natasha had a personal relationship with this Winter Soldier, Steve still half-believed most of it all was a ghost story, a relic from the Cold War dreamed up to scare good little agents into doing their jobs right. He couldn’t face talk about wars and assassins today. Today, he needed a day off. 

In the end, Steve decided not being by himself was a better option than breaking all his charcoal and tearing up the pages. Able to afford the supplies now or not, he still cringed at modern prices — and he thought he always would. Like his old landlady, the Widow Malone, balking at the cost of turnips. 

But he got down to Phil and Clint’s floor and Phil was in front of the couch surrounded by boxes of comics. When he looked up at Steve’s approach, he flushed a dull red. He hadn’t done that since the earliest days of their acquaintance. 

“Hey, Steve,” he said.

“What’s all this?” Steve said, taking a seat on the floor across from Phil.

Phil cleared his throat. “I know what day it is,” he said, and Steve’s heart stumbled in its timekeeping. He found his throat doing its damnedest to replicate an asthma attack he’d never have again, and when he met Phil’s eyes he found only sympathy. “I thought — well, if you wanted, I thought I could show you a few of the original stories he’s in. And.” Another clearing of the throat, and Phil’s ears were blazing. He rummaged around in the box directly to his right and produced a browning paper sleeve. He handled it as if it were precious, a Fabergé egg liable to crumble through his fingers, and out slipped a matte photograph in high contrast black and white. 

It was Bucky. It was Steve and Bucky in uniform, sitting around a table playing cards and drinking beers — nursing _a_ beer, in Steve’s case. The camera had caught Steve, beatifically happy as he gazed at Bucky with quirk to his smile. He’d just told a joke, and Bucky — God. Bucky was laughing, beautiful and shining, head thrown back and teeth gleaming. This was Bucky, distilled and perfect, and taking in the sight for the first time in far too long (six months, three days, fourteen hours — and sixty-seven years) made heat bloom behind Steve’s ribs. It was cleansing, it was nauseating, it was altogether too much. Tears prickled behind his eyes and a laugh bubbled out from his throat as he took the photo from Phil’s hands. Beyond the borders of the photograph, Steve saw Phil duck his head and busy himself with an old comic.

When Steve got a grip on himself, he put the photo down in his lap and looked up at Phil.

“Thank you,” he said, voice thick. Phil slouched in on himself and gave a minute shrug, lips curling up in a tiny, embarrassed smile. 

“I got it in an auction in ’98. There was a whole box of pictures, actually, but they’re in storage. You can have them all, of course, I just — I thought you could use this one today. It’s the only one of him, unfortunately. We’ll have JARVIS digitize it, and I know a good place for custom framing.”

Steve nodded because he didn’t think his mouth would work. He thought he remembered the night this photograph was taken. It was France on their very first leave, all the guys playing for cigarettes and ribbing each other about brothels. Later, Bucky slipped into Steve’s private quarters — a privilege of Steve’s rank — and they picked up where they’d left off before Bucky up and joined the goddamned army without bothering to tell him first.

That would be enough to remember that night forever, but what Steve savored most came in the hazy dark afterward, Bucky half-sprawled on Steve's back and breathing soft on his shoulder while Steve trailed his fingers over baby-smooth skin.

That was the night Bucky finally agreed to marry him.

—

The first time Steve asked, he was twelve, Bucky was thirteen, and she had just punched Chris McBride in the ear for calling Steve a sissy baby.

“Nah,” Bucky had said with a careless swipe at the fringe on her forehead. “Unless you wanna wear the dress.”

The second time Steve asked, they had been out of the orphanage and on their own for three years. Bucky had come home with a split lip — and bloody knuckles.

“These guys you choose are no good, Buck,” he told her. She barely winced when Steve dabbed iodine on her scrapes. “I would — I would treat you right.”

She’d smiled, a sad, blood-stained thing. “I know you would, Steve,” she said, and laid her head on his shoulder. 

The third, fourth, and fifth times Steve asked over the next few years, Bucky just didn’t answer. Later when he prodded her about it, she told him that what a fella said between the sheets never counted, but Steve couldn’t think of a time he’d ever said something he didn’t mean just because she was naked and beautiful. 

The sixth time Steve asked, it was 1941, they’d been putting the “sin” in “living in sin” for almost five years, and Europe was at war. He told her if it went the way of the Great War and hometown boys had to do their part, he’d be signing up, but not before getting hitched.

“That way, if I die, well… you’d be taken care of.”

For a moment Steve thought Bucky might actually sock him one. She wasn’t like any other dame Steve knew — not that he knew too many. She wore her hair short and had given up on things like nylons and heels and lipstick. She worked in trousers at the docks, keeping inventory on paper but hauling goods as well as any fella in practice. She held her liquor but never her tongue. Sometimes he’d catch her looking at him as if he were eight feet tall, and the way she’d look away when he saw only made the flutter in his heart act up worse.

“Sometimes you’re a real horse’s ass, you know that Steve?” she said. 

“Hey now—”

“No. No, I ain’t marrying you. Why would I marry a damn fool?” She stormed out of the apartment and didn’t come back until after dark. Steve was waiting for her, heart refusing to calm.

“I was gonna come looking for you in ten minutes,” he said. “It ain’t safe out there for a lady alone.”

“Aw hell, Steve,” she said, and she looked worn and miserable, dragging a hand over her brow. “I can take care of myself. And I ain’t no lady.”

Steve crossed the small single room of their apartment to stand before her. She had an inch or three on him, but it didn’t bother him any. He took her wrist and she shut her eyes.

“How bout this?” he said, butting his forehead gently against hers. “I’ll leave off the proposals until you tell me you want one. But you gotta promise you’ll tell me the minute you change your mind. And tell me how to do it right while you’re at it.”

Bucky’s laugh was a puff of air against Steve’s own lips, and then they were kissing, her arms winding around his waist, his hands clutching at her hips. They still had two separate single beds, but they’d pushed them together a long time ago. When the Widow Malone stopped by, they’d shove them apart again, and Bucky would make herself scarce because it was one thing to be named _James Buchanan Barnes_ after your dead father, but it was another to be a girl with that name renting out a space with a fella you weren’t married to. 

The seventh time, while she smoked on the fire escape and he leaned in the window keeping her company, she had made him laugh, made his heart swell, and it just slipped out even though he’d made a promise. She let it lie for a while in the silence between them. Then she stubbed out her cigarette, crossed her arms over her chest, and rolled her shoulders inward. She kept staring out at the street, and Steve knew by the sinking of his stomach that he’d made a mistake. 

“You don’t wanna marry me, Steve,” Bucky said, voice low. “You should stop asking.”

She brushed past him to get back inside, and Steve thought for sure that was his heart skewered and done for.

The next day, he had a guy on the ropes when Bucky swooped in and rescued him, except she was in a real serious uniform and her breasts were nowhere to be found. She made a convincing and surprisingly handsome soldier, and Steve sparked with a gut-churning combination of fear and jealousy.

“The 107th,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “Sergeant James Barnes, shipping out for England first thing tomorrow.”

“Bucky—”

“You can’t tell anyone, Steve. You have to promise me.”

“I just — I should be going with you.”

She made an abortive gesture as if to touch his face, but caught herself and jerked her hand back. She straightened up tall, and the fitted lines of the uniform made her look taller.

“Come on,” she said, slinging an arm rough around his neck and dragging him out of the alley. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“Why, where are we going?”

“The future.”

—

Phil came through for Steve again a month after he had the photograph framed. Steve kept the original on his bedside table, and he had a digital copy on his StarkPhone. This time, Phil walked into Steve’s apartment carrying a battered cardboard box.

“Found this in a vintage shop in Bath last week,” Phil said, holding the box up as if for inspection. The metal curve of film reels glinted out of the open top.

“I know for a fact you were here cursing at your physical therapist all last week,” Steve said. “And you shouldn’t be lifting things.” He took the box out of Phil’s hands.

“My hero,” Phil said. He didn’t bother to hide the snide lilt in his voice. Steve winced — he knew what it was to be treated like an invalid. Phil was cleared for desk duty now; he went in to HQ at least a few hours a day. Avengers or not, he was still Natasha’s handler, even remotely, and she was out on a mission now. 

“Sorry,” Steve said. He couldn’t quite bring himself to give the box back, so he set it on the kitchen island.

“I have people, Steve,” Phil said. “Being a level-seven SHIELD agent has its perks.”

“Is this like making the intern do a coffee run, except for the coffee is Captain America memorabilia in other countries?”

“I knew you’d catch on to this 21st century thing like a champ,” Phil said and clapped him on the shoulder. “So. You and the Howling Commandos made war bond films from the front. This pile should have a few of them.”

Once upon a time, Steve had hated those films. Not _hated_ , he supposed, but they embarrassed him, and the little kick he got out of seeing himself on the big screen didn’t outweigh the feeling he got from them. It was the same feeling he got out of being in tights in front of an audience, surrounded by chorus girls and pandering for donations instead of standing at the sides of his brothers in arms and doing his part in the fight. Exposed, and like he had given something of himself he couldn’t take back. 

Now, he just wanted to see the guys again. He wanted to see Bucky, alive and in motion.

“I’ll pay you back,” he said. Tony once showed him how much a rare Captain America action figure was going for on eBay and he almost threw up, super soldier serum or not.

Phil gave his shoulder a squeeze before dropping his hand back to his side.

“You don’t owe me anything, Steve,” he said. “This is — this is between friends.”

Steve sent him a tight smile. It was good to have friends again. 

 

One of the floors of Stark Tower was a home cinema, complete with a popcorn maker and fountain drink machine, a wall-sized screen, and stadium seating comprised of cushy arm chairs that had what Tony called “ass warmers.” Steve had been skeptical, but at the first warming of his ass, he had to admit Tony was onto something. The cinema was set up for both digital and analogue film screenings, and turns out one of Phil’s level-seven SHIELD agent skills was a working knowledge of film projection.

Three of the reels contained his short war bond films, and there was another he and his team weren’t featured in. Phil indulged him, and they watched the Howling Commando films three times each — once with the narration, and twice with the sound turned off. 

Without the narration to impel them to buy bonds, Steve started filling in with stories.

“Gabe was a hit with the French girls,” he said, “and one night Dum Dum decided to try him on as a matchmaker. He ended up naked from the waist down in front of a bar, covered in some dame’s drink. He never did get out of Gabe what he’d said to her.”

Phil snorted. “Did _you_?”

Steve laughed. “Ah, Phil, I can’t fool you with the innocent look anymore.”

“Not a chance.”

“She was a redhead with gams out to Spain. Gabe told her Dum Dum wanted to know if the, uh, carpet matched the drapes.” Steve felt the tips of his ears flame. Phil laughed so hard Steve worried he might pull something, but the mirth was infectious and soon Steve was laughing too, his belly aching with the effort of it.

Steve told Phil about Morita stealing HYDRA’s special weaponry in his trousers and the resultant rumor that he was hiding a real monster in his underwear. Steve told Phil about the time Dernier panicked because he thought he had VD, but turns out Dum Dum had riddled his Johnson with dots from a red pen while he was passed out. Steve told Phil about Falsworth’s attempt at making a stew one night in the German wilderness, which proved as explosive and messy as any of Falsworth’s bombs. Steve told Phil story after story about the pranks and laughs the Commandos had shared, and Steve found that it was good to remember those times. It was good to remember there was something beyond death and loss and the yawn of seven decades passing in the space of a heartbeat. Even though it hurt a little, it was a clean, hot kind of pain — the kind you get from having something stitched up. 

The last reel finished up for the third time and the screen went blank before them, flooding the cinema with low light. Steve and Phil sat in the ensuing silence for a moment until Phil said, “Tell me if I’m out of line here, but I can’t help but notice you didn’t have any stories about Bucky. I hope you know you can tell me about him if you want to. Even… even if you’ve never been able to say anything before. You can say it now, and I won’t tell a soul.”

Steve swallowed. The Bucky of the films was by turns a deadly sniper with a determined square jaw and a carefree, handsome joker quick to laugh and slap Steve on the back. And the Steve of the films never failed to look at Bucky like Bucky hung the moon. He was used to referring to Bucky by “he” and “him” for the benefit of Bucky’s cover, but in his head, in his private time alone, and now in a future where he wasn’t a soldier and no one was in danger of a dishonorable discharge, Bucky was a woman. Bucky was his girl. 

“You think me and Buck—” Steve cut himself off. “Does… does everyone think that?” He frantically searched his memory for moments they might have been less than discreet. 

Phil’s brows furrowed. Steve regretted his tone — aghast and a little panicked. 

“No, no of course not,” Phil said. “I just thought maybe, and if it was true you could probably use a sympathetic ear. You know about me and Clint, right?”

Steve nodded.

“Okay,” Phil said, “and you haven’t been how people might have expected a man from the ’40s to be about that.”

“Us grandpas do know what sex is,” Steve said, “even the kind that takes place outside of wedlock and the approval of others.” 

Phil shrugged and one side of his mouth curled up in a shadow of a smile.

“Not saying it’s right, but that’s what people think.” 

“So the fact that I’m not a bigot means me and Buck were, what, a couple?” The old ugly words some people from Steve’s time might have called such a couple loom large in Steve’s memory.

“Were you?” Phil’s eyes were clear and guileless. “You don’t have to say, Steve. I’m just — here, if you need me to be.”

The thing was, Steve had never been able to tell anyone about him and Bucky before. Back before the war, she’d lose her reputation if anyone knew she was living with her fella without a ring, so to the people in their lives they were just friends, and everyone was all too willing to believe Steve was built for strictly platonic relationships. The only time he could have her on his arm was if they went out for drinks beyond Brooklyn, and they could hardly ever afford that. And then, of course, there was the war, and in Europe the layers of keeping mum piled high. Bucky even made him put a picture of Agent Carter in his compass, and the narrative around the romance of Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter grew large enough to spawn its own spin-off in the Captain America comics series. He once asked Bucky if she were jealous, because Steve was, a little bit — he was jealous of this alternate Steve who didn’t have to squirrel his love away. Bucky had snorted and said Peggy was a stand-up gal and left it at that. 

These days, women were allowed in combat and so were homosexuals. No harm could come of telling Phil, but some secrets were his and some were not. 

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice broke. He looked at his hands and cleared his throat. “Yeah, me and Bucky were a couple. For a long, long time.” They’d started up in 1937 when Steve was nineteen; Bucky died in late 1944, and Steve followed soon after.

In his peripheral vision, Phil just nodded. 

“When Bucky fell, I didn’t know if I could keep going. I had a mission and I almost gave it up because my — my sweetheart was gone. That’s the kind of man I am, Phil. You should know that when you read all those comics. Bucky was the real hero. Bucky was my hero since the moment we met.”

“You didn’t give up though,” Phil said. “You lost the one you loved and you thought everything was hopeless, but you woke up every morning afterward and you did what you had to do for the safety of your team and the world. That’s who I see when I look at you.”

Steve smiled a weak, watery sort of smile. 

“Well,” Phil continued, a glint in his eye, “that and the guy who drops the most creative curses I’ve ever heard when he burns himself cooking.”

That stirred a real laugh from him.

“Bucky used to threaten to wrap me up in asbestos before I was allowed to cook.” 

Phil snorted. “Oh God.”

“You know, most people swallow the line about me and Peggy.”

“Ah, but I knew Agent Carter.”

Steve started. “What? How?”

“She was my aunt, sort of,” Phil said. He pulled out his phone and began to swipe at the screen. “I grew up hearing about all her escapades and, of course, yours. I was this scrawny little kid who had trouble making friends, and she gave me my first Cap action figure, which was actually a really rare pre-war Steve Rogers modeled after this comic arc that explored your life before. She told me this Steve was her hero, not the guy in the spangly suit. Of course she was a founding member of SHIELD, and she’s the one who recruited me and Nick both out of the Rangers.”

Steve felt fresh grief for his friend. She was one of those rare people who had truly seen him, and he missed her fiercely. He’d looked her up shortly after being thawed — she’d died in 2009.

“How can someone sort of be your aunt?” Steve asked. It was easier than asking why anyone would want comics about him before he was Captain America, but he had trouble wrapping his mind around the level of celebrity that came with being a national icon in the 21st century. It was why he stayed at home a lot, frankly.

Now Phil handed him his phone. On it was a picture of Peggy, older than when Steve knew her but no older than her early 40s, on a beach and posing under a big umbrella with her arm around another woman about the same age. They wore modest swim suits and matching grins. Peggy was, as ever, radiant in her beauty.

“That was my mother’s sister, Helen. They were together for almost fifty years before Helen died.”

Steve felt his eyebrows rise and he inspected the photo more closely. Helen’s dark hair was straight and fine, pulled back in a ponytail. He couldn’t see Phil in her, but he could see her happiness, and Peggy’s.

“I shouldn’t even say it like that,” Phil went on. “She was more my aunt than Helen was, if we’re talking about how close we were. She was my aunt.”

“I’m so glad she was happy.”

“She mourned you. She was a soldier, and you were a brother in arms. I think she was glad I was such a fan, because it gave her an excuse to talk about you. But she didn’t, I don’t know, spend the rest of her life pining away for you like the documentaries and biographies imply. That stuff… it’s all bunk. She and Aunt Helen had a more loving, functional relationship than most couples I’ve known. She wasn’t married because she couldn’t get married, not because she couldn’t move on from your loss.” Phil paused. “Sorry, I just… I get mad when people act like all Peggy was good for was being your girlfriend. She was an amazing woman who did more than anyone will ever know.”

Steve nodded, but couldn’t speak. He handed Phil his phone back. After he swallowed past the lump in his throat, he said, “Thanks so much for showing me.”

“Of course. You’re welcome.”

“She did kiss me once.”

Phil let out a startled laugh. “I never heard that one,” he said. “Are you going to break the gentleman’s code and kiss and tell?”

Steve shifted in his seat and ran a hand through his hair. “Just this once,” he said. 

Phil leaned in and generally did a terrible job at concealing how interested he was. 

“It was right before my confrontation with Schmidt,” Steve said. “I really — I really admired her. I think maybe she knew about me and Bucky, looking back. She comforted me, after Buck fell. In the least comforting way possible, but she knew what I needed more than I did. The kiss, I don’t know. Now that I think on it, maybe it was her way of making sure I knew I wasn’t alone, even with Bucky gone. I can appreciate that.”

Phil stood and winced. He rolled his left shoulder and rubbed at it with his right hand. Steve rose and frowned at the gesture.

“Are you okay?”

“Just a bit stiff is all,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Did you do your exercises today?”

“Yes, and I want you to know that Peggy never told me what a mother hen you were, and for that I’ll never forgive her.”

Steve followed Phil into the projector room to help him put everything in its place. 

“Surprised that one didn’t make it to the gossip rags,” Steve said. 

“Doesn’t sell papers I suppose. Can you imagine the headline? ‘Captain America nags his team about eating their spinach.’”

Steve glanced up and saw Phil winding a length of film onto a reel, deciding it wasn’t good enough, and doing it again. And again. 

“I do know the _other_ line about me, you know,” Steve said.

“Hm? What’s that?” 

“That I’m a virgin saving myself for marriage.”

At that Phil looked up, face cracked into a wide, even smile. 

“Well, Captain, you’re a good Catholic boy,” he said.

Steve laughed. “And if we didn’t have anything to confess to, what would the priests do with their free time?”

—

The fire escape was a good place to dangle your feet and pass the time. It didn’t hurt that the space was so small Steve had no choice but to sit close enough to Bucky to press against her side.

“You know, people who don’t live in New York get to see the stars,” Steve said.

“There are people who don’t live in New York?” Bucky said, smirking around the butt of a cigarette. She took one last drag and flicked it away. They watched the embers tumble and then float their way to the pavement.

Steve grinned. He leaned his forehead against a metal bar and closed his eyes. He wanted to crystallize this moment in time, because it was perfect: he and Bucky side by side talking everything and nothing, sharing body heat in the cool of the evening while the sounds of a living breathing Brooklyn rose up around them, distant white noise. This was what perfect happiness was like. 

He felt her looking at him and cracked open one eye. Her eyes were shrewd, trained on his face as if searching for something. Steve raised his eyebrows and wiped at his cheek.

“I got something on me?”

“Why don’t you have a girl, Steve?”

He knew _because you won’t have me_ would be the wrong thing to say, so he just shrugged and turned back to face the street.

“I don’t think I’m what girls think of when they imagine Prince Charming.”

“To hell with Prince Charming, what did he ever do for anyone? Any dame’d be lucky to have you, Steve.”

Steve shook his head.

“No, really,” Bucky said. “Look at you, you handsome devil. You’re smart and creative and talented — what girl in her right mind wouldn’t line up around the block for a shot?”

Steve hunched forward as if he could stop the rising heat of humiliation from coloring his face. 

“Don’t,” he said. 

“What?”

“Don’t do that. I couldn’t stand it, Buck, not from you.”

“I’m just—”

“No.”

And then there was a soft warmth pressed against his cheekbone, and he jerked away, heart hammering.

“What the hell, Bucky?”

A splash of pink had suffused Bucky’s cheeks, her blue eyes were bright and her breath was coming quicker than it had been just a moment ago.

“Don’t recognize a kiss when you get one, champ?” she said. “Maybe this is your problem.”

Steve felt like his heart was being tenderized by a very accomplished butcher. He stood up to get back in the apartment so he could promptly leave it and find someplace quiet where he could cobble the pieces of himself back together, but he stumbled when Bucky yanked him down and planted her lips on his.

It was rough and damp and the angle was wrong and it was nothing at all like he thought this sort of thing should go. He pulled away and scrambled up and scowled down at Bucky, whose mouth was red and gleaming in the low light of the street. She looked… wrecked.

“What are you doing, Buck?”

“Jumping the line, I thought.” She looked small suddenly, twenty years old and just a girl. She’d taken care of Steve for so long it was hard to think of her that way, but there it was in stark skinny Technicolor. 

“You don’t really want me.”

She stood, eyes blazing, and poked him in the shoulder hard enough to make it ache. Steve forced himself not to flinch.

“And you don’t get to tell me what I want.”

“You always date those big lugs,” Steve said. He was aware that he sounded bewildered but he was unable to keep it from his voice. 

Bucky barked out an ugly laugh and shook her head. 

“Yeah, big and stupid and mean. So I won’t be reminded of you — but I am anyway, Steve. I go on those crap dates and no matter what I do, I wish you were the one holding my hand.” She stepped past him to get back inside. “Don’t worry, I won’t bother you about it anymore.” 

Steve followed her in and ran to block the door before she could leave.

“So, I’m a world-class idiot, but you knew that already,” Steve said, plastered up against the door and panting. Bucky’s mouth arched downward, eyebrows drawn together in a scowl. 

“Steve, let me storm out with some dignity.”

Steve peeled himself off the door and took a step closer to her.

“I only like dames who throw a better right hook than me and cut their hair short and have boys’ names. Do you know where I can find one of those?”

Bucky was staring at him, a cautious look in her eyes. That was how she looked when wounded and trying not to show it. Steve wanted to smack his head against the door in punishment, but instead he set fingertips against her wrist and stepped in close.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, well, some lunkheads need all the help they can get.” 

She leaned down and touched her lips to his again. It felt soft as moth wings, if moth wings sparked with electricity. Steve’s eyes shut of their own accord. His arms dangled at his sides, but Bucky took them both and placed them on her waist. Then, he felt the tip of her tongue run along his bottom lip and he made a little sound he would never cop to. Bucky took the opportunity it offered to slide her tongue in his mouth, just a little. Steve clutched at Bucky’s hips as if she were the anchor keeping him grounded.

Bucky pulled back and laid her hands on his shoulders. She rubbed the pad of her thumbs on his collarbone.

“That your first kiss?” she asked gently. The tone didn’t suit her. He blushed and let her go. “Hey, no.” She pulled his hands back to where they were. “I’m glad,” she said. “I hate thinking of someone else getting to touch you.”

“Who else could there be?” Steve said. “It’s only ever been you, for me.” 

Bucky closed her eyes and laid her forehead against his. Steve exhaled a shaky breath. He put his arms around her fully and pulled her in for a tight hug. Her arms came up around him, and her breath on his neck made his spine tingle. 

“I wanna be with you,” Bucky said. “Can I?”

Steve shuddered and hugged her closer. Bucky disentangled herself, but she pulled him toward the beds by the wrist. 

“Help me with the beds,” she said. 

They pushed the beds together. When he was finished, Steve stood at the side of his own and looked at Bucky across from him. He didn’t know what to do with his arms, so he stuck his hands in his pockets. Bucky just smirked at him. 

“Nervous?”

“Aw, hell, Buck.”

She got on the beds and knelt, then leaned over and tugged on his arms until he joined her. 

“We can just lie down.”

Steve swallowed and nodded. He hoped he wasn’t sweating too bad. He lay down stiffly and she curled up against his side. His breath came quicker, and Bucky laid a hand over his heart.

“Don’t go havin’ an asthma attack on me,” she said. 

Steve closed his eyes. “I’m not,” he said, a little too sharp. She squeezed him in response. 

After a little while just lying in the quiet, he felt her lips on his neck, liquefying his spine. In his pants, his penis twitched and began to firm up. He turned his head to give her better access. She pushed her hand into his shirt between the buttons and shifted until she was above him, straddling him. He put his hands on her hips, and then they were kissing again. He tried to follow her lead — mouth open, but not too wide, tongue exploratory but not slobbery.

“You’re a quick study,” she whispered when they parted for breath. She rocked her hips a bit, which resulted in his erection budging up against her backside and stars prickling his vision. He groaned, and she hushed him. “You know what this building’s like.” He nodded quickly and sealed his lips shut. She smiled, stroked the side of his face, and kissed him close-mouthed. 

When she sat up again, she unbuttoned his shirt. He sat up to help her take it off along with his suspenders, heart hammering. He’d been shirtless in front of her so many times, but it suddenly seemed overwhelming and _actually naked_ , and he squeezed his eyes shut. She hooked her hand behind his neck and pulled their foreheads together. Their noses bumped. He inched his hands around to cup her ass, and he could feel the curve of her smile against his own mouth.

“Take my shirt off, Rogers,” she said. Steve’s penis jumped a little again. He stuck the tip of his tongue out between his lips and began unbuttoning. Bucky was still as she sat on top of him. He could feel her eyes watching his face as smooth skin was revealed. Finally, he pushed the shirt off her shoulders. She wore a plain white brassiere, serviceable and modest. Her breasts were small, but what he liked about breasts was the tender curve they pushed into fabric, and they were enough to do precisely that. Or, that’s what he liked about breasts before he’d ever seen any in the flesh. She did something complicated with her hands behind her back and discarded the brassiere on the floor. Her breasts were pert and round, tipped coral and tightening. Steve wanted nothing so much as to take them into his mouth. He looked up and met her eyes, mouth hanging helplessly open. Her hands traced his arms, his shoulders, his neck, to come frame his face again. “Go ahead. I want you to.”

He cupped them carefully and ventured a swipe at her nipples with his thumbs. She sighed softly and tipped her head back, eyes shut. She ground her hips in a tight circle against his erection, and Steve’s eyes rolled back. The scant weight of her breasts in his palms made his breath come faster, and the way she rocked against him wasn’t helping. Or, it was — too well. 

He dipped his head down to take one nipple into his mouth and was rewarded with a choked off moan and fingers tight in his hair. The tug at his scalp and the way she pinned him made him harder. He thrust upward toward the pressure of her body. They rocked together, and he squeezed at her other breast until he decided he needed to taste that one too. When their rhythm became more erratic and Steve started worrying he might finish too quick, she clambered off him and yanked out a drawer from her bedside table to rummage in. 

Steve sank panting back onto his elbows, suddenly aware of the ridiculous picture he must paint: a little guy, half naked with a circus tent in his pants. Bucky came back to the beds with a handful of little packages: rubbers. Steve’s mouth went dry. He looked up at her wide-eyed, and as he watched she dropped her trousers. 

“Now you,” she said quietly. He got to his feet, undid his belt, and eased his own trousers out with care to his penis. They stood looking at each other. Steve stood up straighter, shoulders squared, but he didn’t know what she saw there. What he saw was the flush of color in her cheeks, her short dark hair sticking up in disarray, her sweet little breasts and gently tapered waist, the way her hips flared just a bit and gave way to pale, sleek thighs with a thatch of dark curls between them and a little ass rounded by the physicality of her job.

“You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he told her. 

She gave a short, watery laugh and looked off to the side. He reached toward her to smooth out her hair. She scrubbed at her eyes and met his gaze, chin tipped at a defiant angle.

“What kinda girls do you know anyway, Rogers?”

“I have it on good opinion that New York has the best lookers in the world, and lucky me, I got the cream of the crop right here.”

“Didn’t know you’d be such a sweet talker.”

“No static,” Steve said. “Just God’s honest truth.” He stepped up and kissed the furrow out of her brow. He pulled her close, hands at the small of her back, cock pressed up against her thigh. She kissed him and brought her own hands around to squeeze at his ass. He may have yelped, and she grinned. She manhandled him down onto the beds again and when she got him supine, she _gave his penis a kiss_. He made a strangled sound and dropped his head back into the pillows. 

“I’ll do that right later,” Bucky said as she climbed on top of him again. “But for now I want you in me, all right?”

Steve just nodded.

She unwrapped one of the prophylactics and rolled it onto his penis. Her grip on him made his eyes roll back. 

“Nice prick, Steve.”

“ _Bucky_.”

“Shh.”

She scooted forward and he sat up, arms around her. She steadied his cock at the base of her curls and slowly sank down on him. He panted and fought to keep his eyes open as he was enveloped in tight heat.

“Oh my _God_ ,” he said. It was unlike he’d imagined, quietly in the shower, trying to make sure Bucky never heard him. It was unlike his hand, or rubbing off on the sheets, or anything he’d ever felt. It was singular, and it was _Bucky_. When he was fully inside her, he looked down to where they were connected, flush skin to skin, her knees framing his hips. He looked up at her and she smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck. She began to rock slowly, breath coming in deep sighs. She rested her face against his, her mouth against his — not kissing, but close and sweet and soft. He felt like his heart might burst, but in a good way. He couldn’t speak to tell her he loved her.

She pulled his hands up to touch her breasts again and leaned back. She sped up the rhythm of her hips take quicker, longer thrusts. It was too much — Steve drove into her hard, face buried between her breasts, and came helplessly into the tightness of her body. He slumped back into the bedding, body jolting a few times in the aftermath. Bucky slowed down on top of him until he felt his dick go limp and she climbed off. He was distantly aware of her peeling the rubber off of him. She curled up next to him, head on his shoulder and hand on his belly. He covered her hand with his own, entangled their fingers.

When his breathing calmed, he said, “That was really great. Were you— I mean, did you like it?” He shifted his head to look at her. She had a soft, crooked smile on her face.

“Yeah,” she said. “But you wanna help a girl out?”

“Huh?”

“Turn over, facing me,” she said. He obeyed, and she pulled his right hand down into the damp curls between her legs. “Your middle two fingers, go on.” Steve licked his lips and complied. He pushed two fingers inside, where she was hot and slick and soft, where she grasped at him like a hungry thing and he couldn’t believe what he was feeling. She sighed and slung a leg over his hip to thrust into his fingers. “In and out, Steve, like you’re fucking me. And hook ’em hard, you won’t hurt me.” One of her own hands inched down and she used the same fingers he was using to massage at a little nub buried in her hair. 

It took him a few tries to get the rhythm and the motion she wanted, but soon she was wrenching his hair with her free hand, holding his mouth to her breast and panting open-mouthed as she grew slicker and slicker and finally seized up, stiff, back bowing, and let out a harsh, long breath. Steve kept going, arm burning, until she went lax beside him, cheeks pink and eyes closed. He eased his hand away and settled on his side.

He wanted to draw her like this. Shining and sated, floppy in bed with him. _Him_ , Steve Rogers, who thought no dame’d ever looked at him twice. Or even once. He hadn’t seen the business end of a dollar bill in a long time, but right now he felt like a Rockefeller. 

He rolled off the bed and stood to get his sketchbook. His hand was soaked, a bit sticky. It — _Bucky_ — smelled like fresh sea air after a cleansing storm. He licked at it experimentally. He felt eyes on him then and looked up to find Bucky casting him an amused but vaguely dirty smirk.

“Yeah?” she said. Steve just shrugged, face burning. Slowly, deliberately, he licked the rest off. Bucky’s tongue came out to wet her lips, and her nipples hardened. She raised herself up on one elbow and let her legs fall open.

Steve forgot about the sketchbook.

—

The day after a battle of wits that pitted the Avengers-minus-Natasha against an alien mastermind in a game of riddles, Clint walked in on Steve yelling at Phil’s comics.

To be fair, Steve had thought he was alone on Phil and Clint’s floor, and the comics were _wrong_.

Clint skidded to a halt upon entering the living room with a smoothie in hand, eyes big in his face, and Steve stared at him slack-jawed and red-faced.

“I just needed a break from being clever,” he said. He held up his blue hands. “I’m wearing gloves!”

“Hey man, I’m not judging. But don’t let Phil hear you say his babies aren’t clever; you’ll probably find itching powder in your uniform or something.” He fidgeted as if it were personal experience talking.

“He told me I could come see them whenever,” Steve said. 

“I know, dude. I don’t mind. You’re welcome to come over whenever you want, except when me and Phil are knocking boots.” He grinned when, on cue, Steve flushed further. “Hey, you want a smoothie or something? I make the best, don’t listen to Thor.”

“Oh. Yeah, thanks.”

Clint ducked back into the kitchen, and Steve carefully put Captain America #197 back into its dust jacket and slid it into place behind Captain America #196. In it, Bucky Barnes had become jealous of Cap’s relationship with Agent Carter, so he made a play for her that ended up with her getting hit and Bucky getting a demerit. In the one before that, Bucky Barnes had made a stupid mistake that resulted in HYDRA finding the whole team and torturing them until Cap flexed his muscles so hard he was able to get free. It went on and on like that — Bucky the sidekick, Bucky the fool, Bucky the at-home adversary. Worse, this run of comics was from the 50s, and Gabe and Morita weren’t in them at all. Steve sighed and took his gloves off before rubbing at his eyes.

Clint came back with a pink smoothie for Steve and reclined behind him on the couch.

“Dare I ask what caused such offense?” he said.

“They’re just stupid,” Steve said. “Stupid, weird little stories that happen to have my name on them. They drag Bucky’s name through the mud. I hate that.”

Clint grunted in agreement.

“Those old ones, man,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re really, I don’t know, simplistic and un-self aware. Or something. Plus the art kinda blows, let’s not lie. You should skip to the 80s — there was kind of a comic renaissance and everyone gets treated better. Better story lines, more nuanced characterization, less shit art. I think Bucky even becomes Captain America somewhere in there.”

“I just can’t believe these are the comics Phil likes.”

“Those ones aren’t — he ain’t that old, Cap.”

Steve threw a grin over his shoulder at that. Then he sobered and stood, only to collapse next to Clint on the couch and fling his gloves away. 

“I just wanted, I don’t know, a connection to the guys. Especially Buck. They’re all dead, you know?”

Clint had big eyes, blue and dark, and now they went wide and sad. Steve hadn’t quite understood what drew Phil to him before, but he was beginning to see the appeal.

“So I thought I’d go through them chronologically,” Steve said. “What a crock.”

“A lot of them require context,” Clint said. “Like those ones, those are totally red scare, McCarthyist propaganda. They’re really not, you know, about you, Steve. Or Bucky, or anyone.”

“Yeah.” Steve nodded. “Yeah, I can see that now. It was a stupid idea.”

“Nah,” Clint said. “I think it’s hard for the rest of us to comprehend what it’s like to just… wake up in a new century, with everyone you know gone. Very Rip Van Winkle. You grasp at what you can, right?”

Steve nodded.

“Phil’s just… a very avid collector, and he always has been,” Clint said. “I like imagining tiny Phil, surrounded by all his Cap action figures, lining them all up perfect, probably writing memos about it.” A faraway look overtook Clint’s face along with an absentminded smile. Steve couldn’t help smiling back. Then Clint blinked, sharp eyes focused on Steve. “He just completed his comics collection two years ago — the rare ones, the early ones, the ones people thought were gone, all of them. It doesn’t mean he thinks they’re all shining examples of the comic form at its best.”

“I know,” Steve said. “I would never criticize them to him, I just…” He raised and dropped one shoulder in an uneven shrug. 

Clint grinned.

“Secret’s safe with me, Cap.”

“He told me everyone who knows the Captain America story knows the Bucky Barnes story. But that’s all they are — stories. Fiction. Total lies.”

“Mythology,” Clint said gently. “Legend. They share the names, but they’re not the men.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Yeah, you’re right, of course.”

“You could set the story straight, you know.”

“What, like come out?” Steve cocked his head. He didn’t think he could do that. It would have felt a lot more like lying than just… misdirecting by omission. Lying to the entire American public. About what he got up to in the bedroom a lifetime ago. He may have made a face.

Clint pursed his mouth, eyebrows furrowed. “Huh?”

“I mean, about me and Bucky.”

“Oh. _Oh_. Dude. No, that’s not what I meant, but… Oh man, are you coming out to me right now? Because I’m not very nurturing, or whatever. I can go get someone better, like Pepper, you like Pepper, right?”

Steve laughed. “I think you do all right, Clint,” he said. “And calm down. I mean. Phil already knows. He’s sharp, your fella.”

Clint seemed to relax, or at least look a little less like a deer about to bolt.

“Yeah, he is,” Clint said. He narrowed his eyes. “And I’m no slouch. You thought he’d told me.”

“Well…”

“He wouldn’t, you know. Betray a confidence. _Obviously_.” Steve was getting a very focused stink eye from the man with the best vision in the world. It made him feel about two inches tall. And naked. 

“I wouldn’t have held it against him,” he said. “You’re his sweetheart, and all.”

Clint took pity on him and gave a single laugh. “I like that. _Sweetheart_. Better than this weird shit that’s all in right now. ‘Partners?’ What are we, about to go into a board meeting?”

“Could make an honest man out of him and call him your husband, Barton.” Steve poked Clint in the shoulder. 

“Can you believe it? Phil has frigging _principles_ that tell him he shouldn’t get married until it’s legal for us in all fifty states.”

“So you’ve asked him?”

“All the damn time, Rogers, ugh.”

Steve’s mouth curved up in a wry smile.

“Yeah, I know how that goes.”

Clint blinked.

“You too?”

Steve nodded. His smile had faded into a pained little quirk of the lips.

“So you were a forward thinker then,” Clint said, eyebrows raised.

“Not really,” Steve said. “Just a lucky lug who knew he had a good thing going and didn’t want to lose it. Like you.”

Clint was quiet for a moment before slouching back into the cushions. He looked at Steve, punched him in the shoulder.

“Tell me about him,” he said. “The Bucky Barnes who isn’t in the comics.”

That’s how Phil found them an hour later, laughing and gesticulating, smoothies melting rings into the coffee table.

—

“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky had said, blinking blearily at his chest, and there wasn’t much time after that for talking.

Now, it was days after Bucky had been released from medical and Steve still hadn’t been able to catch her alone. When he saw her out and about, she was always with a few of the guys from the 107th, laughing, knocking back drinks. They hadn’t made any promises to each other before she’d left the States. Steve thought it was implied, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she’d found someone better than the sickly guy with the doodling habit she was always having to take care of. Maybe the whole reason she’d left was to get him off her tail. 

Steve sat glumly at a table alone, chin in one hand, pencil in the other. He was careful not to draw Bucky’s face, because damned if he was getting caught mooning over another soldier, but he drew her anyway: her funny, nubby toes; the perfect shell curve of her ear; the Texas-looking birthmark she had on the back of her left thigh; her left thigh. 

Then, there was a presence at his back, and a biting voice said, “Your girlfriend’s missing some parts, Rogers.”

Steve scrambled to his feet, spine at attention and hand to his brow in a salute.

“Sir,” he barked.

Colonel Philips rolled his eyes and shoved a file marked “eyes only” into his arms. 

“At ease, soldier,” he said. His lip curled a bit as he looked Steve up and down. “Seems you’re a bona fide hero, and the brass have seen fit to reward your insubordination with a rank you didn’t earn. Congratulations, Captain Victory Rolls, you’re getting your own team.”

Steve caught his jaw before it could drop. 

“You fill that file up with the names of the men you want and give it to me first thing tomorrow. And get them to _agree_ to it first, for God’s sake.”

“Yes sir, thank you sir.”

The Colonel let out a long, gusty sigh, shook his head, and walked away. 

Steve opened the file. In it was a single sheet of paper with his stats on it, and a picture of him from before the serum. He shut the file and went to find the only right-hand man a real captain could ever want: James Buchanan Barnes.

 

 

When Steve found her, Bucky had a cigarette butt lodged unlit between her lips while she, Morita, and Dernier played a lazy game of rummy. Morita and Dernier nodded at Steve in greeting, and Morita shifted to the side so Steve could sit on the narrow bit of bench beside him. He fit himself awkwardly on the bench, and when he was done getting comfortable he looked up only to find Bucky staring at him with one eyebrow raised.

“All right there, big guy?” she said, her voice a lower register than he’d ever heard it before. He felt a moment’s vertigo, the girl he knew in Brooklyn blurring with this man, this _soldier_ , who had already seen combat, had been caught by the enemy and subjected to God only knew what torment. Steve felt like his heart had cracked open from the effort of holding all his admiration in.

“Yeah, fine,” he said. Her eyes did a quick sweep of him as if cataloguing, but in one blink the assessment was over and Steve couldn’t be sure he’d really seen it. She grunted in reply and rolled her shoulders inward, eyes fixed on her cards. 

“So you knew Barnes back home?” Morita said, nudging Steve with an elbow. “This I gotta hear.” Steve caught the chagrined look Bucky sent Morita. 

“Um, what do you want to know?” A glance at Morita’s hand revealed that they were playing with a dirty deck. Steve averted his eyes from the big bare breasts quickly, only to catch Bucky smirking at him. Bucky gave her eyebrows a bounce and Steve felt his face flame before he dropped his gaze to the neutral space of the table between them. 

“Does he cut the rug with the dames in Brooklyn as much as he does here?”

Steve’s mouth opened and closed a few times, and Dernier scoffed.

“Your friend, he is trying to protect your reputation,” he said. “Now is it a good one, I wonder, or a bad one?”

Morita snickered and Bucky smirked.

“He’s great!” Steve blurted, and all eyes turned to him. “I mean. He’s the best friend a guy could have. And he’s always been —” Steve swallowed. “—a hit on the dance floor.” Usually while Steve stood at the edge of it, nursing a drink and watching her dance with other guys. It was better that way — it kept him from trampling her toes, and it kept everyone else from thinking they were an item. Mostly, it kept her from being an object of ridicule. When they were outside Brooklyn, she’d have none of it. They were rarely outside Brooklyn.

Dernier slapped Bucky on the back, laughing. Steve met her gaze, but couldn’t parse what he found there. 

“Well, maybe now that you’re here, Barnes’ll get a taste of his own medicine,” Morita said. “He’s always making off with the best girls before the rest of us can get a chance.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault these fine ladies have good taste,” Bucky said.

“One of these days I’m going to find out you’re bribing them with cookies or something,” Morita said.

“Monsieur Captain America,” Dernier said, and Steve cut him off there.

“You can just call me Steve. Or, you know, Rogers, if you prefer.”

“Ah yes. _Steve_. You know that Agent Carter, yes? Perhaps, she is your _petite amie_?”

Steve cut his gaze to Bucky, who raised her eyebrows and adopted an expression of innocent curiosity. 

“Uh, well, I mean I don’t know where you heard that—”

“Only, if Sergeant Barnes here is incorrect, perhaps you could put in a good word for me,” Dernier said.

Steve frowned. “I’m not seeing Agent Carter.”

“No, no, of course not,” Dernier said. “That would be unprofessional.”

Steve sighed. “Hey, guys, you mind if I talk to Barnes alone for a minute? The game’ll keep, and it’ll only be a little bit.”

“I gotta do something about my boots anyway,” Morita said, and walked away with an off-regulation salute.

“And I must collect what I am owed by Sergeant Jones,” Dernier said. 

When they were out of earshot, Bucky kicked Steve in the shin. With steel-toed boots.

“Ow! What the hell, Buck?”

“You’re gonna blow my damn cover, Rogers,” she said, voice that same low register she’d used with the guys around. 

“No, what? How?”

“‘Oh, he’s so great, oh, he’s a hit on the dance floor, oh, I’m gonna marry him and have his babies.’ Jesus, Steve.”

“I was not that bad.”

“If you looked more like a lovesick puppy, you’d sprout a tail and your tongue would fall out of your mouth.”

Steve’s mouth pinched tight and he drew himself up tall as he exhaled. _Lord give me strength,_ he thought.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

“Oh please, can we not?” Bucky sneered and looked away. She picked up the remaining cards and began to shuffle them.

“Can we not _what_? I haven’t even spoken to you once since I got you off that HYDRA table, and all of the sudden I feel like I’m walking into a conversation you’ve been having with some imaginary me somewhere. What gives, Bucky, huh? Is this about Agent Carter?”

Bucky scoffed. “ _Agent Carter_ has a modicum of sense. You, on the other hand…”

“Fine, look, I’ll be more careful. But really, I need to talk to you. I’m gonna have my own team, and I want you to be on it.”

Bucky blinked.

“Really?”

Steve pressed his lips together and cocked his head in a good impression of the sternest nun at the orphanage.

“Barnes. Really.”

“Well.” She cleared her throat and straightened the cards. “Yeah. Of course I’ll be on it. Christ, Rogers, like you had to ask.”

Steve laughed and shook his head.

“Can’t say I understand you, Bucky.”

“You’re not exactly an open book, either, pal.”

They sat there smiling at each other, until Bucky shook herself and scowled.

“Anything else?”

Steve cleared his throat. “I also want your input as to who else to have on the team. Guys with skills, who aren’t afraid to go behind enemy lines, and who’ll have our backs.”

“I got some ideas.”

“Good. That’s good.”

A moment’s silence stretched awkwardly between them.

“Can I ask you something?” Bucky said then, voice softer.

“Anything you want,” Steve said. 

“What’s it like, being in that body?” 

Steve blinked. Bucky’s face betrayed nothing, but her shoulders were tense, and there was a pinch around the skin of her eyes.

“It took some getting used to,” Steve said. “But. It’s been a year. I don’t bump my head as much anymore. I stopped tripping over my own feet. It’s nice to be able to reach things high up, and run, and lift heavy stuff.” He stopped, swallowed, thought about what to say next. Across from him, Bucky seemed bewildered and small. He wanted to make it stop. “The best part is I’ll never have an asthma attack again. I’ll never feel like that again.” _You’ll never have to ease me through it and keep vigil over me late at night, worrying I’ll stop breathing and you won’t be able to do anything about it._ “I can serve my country. I can do my part. I can… I can stand beside you in this, Buck.”

The smile she graced him with was small and crooked, a little pained. But it was real, and it was all he needed.

—

Clint had just crashed on a banana peel and called Steve a “star-spangled anal douche,” to which Steve replied, “How does my boot taste sprinkled with tears of despair, Clint?” Phil, doing something on his laptop a safe distance away, snorted.

It was a Saturday night, and no one was on duty, which meant Clint had been able to set up a gaming night. Somehow this time around that meant just Clint and Steve were racing around sparkly rainbow tracks — Phil didn’t like video games, Tony would rather tinker with the game console itself, Bruce liked only something called Atari, Thor was visiting Jane, and Natasha was still out on her long-term job. Even if she weren’t, when someone mentioned gaming to her, the only thing she would consent to play — as she phrased it — was old-fashioned RISK, and the only person who could bear to play that with her was Phil. He was still recovering from the last game. 

Clint and Steve were still bickering when behind them, Phil stood abruptly. Clint paused the game and twisted into a position that should have been physically impossible.

“Phil?” he said.

“Suit up,” Phil said. Then he eyed Steve. “Not the stars and stripes for you, just something… functional.” 

Just then, all their phones buzzed. Rather, Phil’s and Clint’s buzzed, and Steve’s rang out the theme from JAWS. It was a text from Fury.

“Really, Steve?” Phil said.

“Tony did something so I can’t change it,” Steve said with a wrinkle of his nose.

“We’ll bring it to Bruce after the meeting to see if there’s anything he can do. Let’s go.”

Natasha was back from her reconnaissance mission, and in her custody was the Winter Soldier. 

 

 

Natasha did a quick and dirty debrief at HQ when Steve, Clint, Phil, Tony, and Bruce arrived. Fury stood just behind her, arms crossed before him, expression firmly set to “scowl.” The look on his face always put Steve in mind of Colonel Philips, so he wasn’t as unsettled about it as, say, Tony, who often came out of meetings with Fury with a rant on his tongue and his brain firing seventeen different terrible ideas “to put a smile on that mug.” 

“She was city hopping,” Natasha was saying as she passed out files to each of them. They were full of reports in the front and surveillance photos in the back. Steve skimmed the first report. “I followed her from Seattle to Salt Lake City to Denver to St. Louis to Chicago to Detroit to Toronto to Ottawa.” Natasha took a breath. “She was always a step ahead, but she wasn’t hiding. She knew I was there and neither went to ground nor threatened to kill me. You have to know how rare that is.”

“I feel like this is a story we’ve heard before,” Clint said quietly. Natasha nodded minutely at him, and Steve thought he saw something a lot like gratitude pass between them. 

“I caught up with her in Montreal,” Natasha went on, “and she was not the same as the woman I trained with twenty years ago. She had not aged, of course, but… before, though I knew she was enslaved as I was, she seemed detached enough from the horror of it to complete her kills cleanly, and coldly. There was a reason for her reputation as the most efficient assassin in the world, and there was a reason I was sent to her. I became as good as I am because I learned at her feet. 

“When we finally met in Montreal, she stood before me with her throat bared. I took her to the cinema instead. She let me buy her croissants and tea at cafés. We shared a hotel room and did not speak. Her eyes.” Natasha managed to straighten her spine further. Her gaze was pinned on Clint. Steve had closed his file to give her his full attention, and no one breathed. “I have seen the look in her eyes in the mirror.”

“The Winter Soldier has surrendered to SHIELD,” Fury said. He stepped up to stand beside Natasha, and he placed one hand on her shoulder. A tension left her at the touch, for all that she remained tall and upright. Fury’s eye fixed on Steve. “And she wants an audience with Captain America.”

“What? Me? Why?”

“It’s a trap,” Tony said. 

“I don’t think it is,” Natasha said.

“No, it’s a trap, and if he’s going in, it’s in a Popemobile.” Tony stood up and made for the door. “I can have it ready in, oh, seven months. The Winter Soldier can cool her heels in a cell ’til it’s done. Better get started. Bruce, shall we?”

“The captain will be in full riot gear, of course,” Fury said. “Now sit your dumb ass down, Stark. Rogers, you have five minutes to suit up and meet me, Coulson, and Romanov in interrogation room five.”

“Yes sir,” Steve said.

“Barton, Banner, and Stark, you will stand outside as auxiliary power in case something goes wrong.”

“Sir yes sir!” Tony barked, miming a parody of a salute. “We will stand in the hall with our thumbs up our asses while you let the greatest assassin in the world take tea with Cap, sir!” 

Fury rolled his eye and swept out.

“I feel like you’re going to wake up to something nasty in your bed now, Tony,” Bruce said. His tone was always vaguely mournful, especially when talking to Tony.

“Don’t worry for now, Stark,” Natasha said. “Fury takes the coldest revenge.” She disappeared out the door.

Steve was on her heels before Tony could run his mouth again, file forgotten on the table.

 

 

“You are one minute late, Captain,” Fury said.

“Sorry sir, the kevlar —”

“Can it.” Fury held the door to the interrogation room open for Steve. Phil and Natasha were sitting on chairs in front of a two-way mirror, and on the other side, sitting at a table in the empty room, was a woman. Her head was bowed, long dark hair falling in a hank to obscure her face. Her left arm — her gleaming, mean-looking, _metal_ left arm — was attached to the table by a series of metal cuffs. The cuffs held her arm at an awkward angle, probably as a failsafe measure. Her body was twisted a bit to accommodate it, but she was still and betrayed no sign of discomfort or tension. 

“She goes by Yasha,” Natasha said, “a little boy's name. I don’t know why.”

“That’s some heavy duty weaponry she’s got there,” Steve said.

“All weaponized systems on it have been disabled in addition to being locked down like that,” Fury said. “Those cuffs are adamantium. Even if she manages to fire somehow, which she will not, there’s no getting out of that for her.”

Steve nodded and drew himself up to make for the door between the rooms.

“Good luck, Captain Rogers,” Fury said.

Before he could set his hand on the knob, the Winter Soldier looked up as if she could see through the mirror and met Steve’s eyes.

All the breath left his body and he stumbled. He was distantly aware of Fury swearing, his vision dappling, but then Phil was at his side, arm around his shoulders.

“Steve, come on, sit down, we’ll get you a glass of water.” He steered Steve to an empty chair and addressed Fury. “Maybe he shouldn’t do this. What did she do to him?”

Steve heaved in a lungful of air like he used to when the panic of an asthma attack had him by the nuts. 

“She didn’t do anything,” he said. He blinked hard and found Natasha kneeling at his side with a glass of water and a hard look on her face. Phil and Fury hovered over his shoulders. “I know her. I know her.”

“And just how might you know a Soviet-era Russian operative, Captain Rogers?” Fury said.

“I’m not so sure she’s really Russian, sir,” Natasha said, eyes never wavering from Steve’s. 

Steve gulped down the entire glass of water and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. He was a little breathless, but he kept his voice from cracking.

“She was —” How to say it? _That’s Bucky Barnes, and she duped the American government to fight for her country? That’s Bucky Barnes, and she was the best soldier I ever knew? That’s Bucky Barnes, and I think I’m having a heart attack, send help?_ “She was my friend.”

“Rogers, it can’t have escaped you that there’s no way any one of your friends is alive and in such fighting shape this day and age,” Fury said. 

There was some shuffling behind him, and Natasha’s eyes flicked up at Phil, then Fury. Steve felt Fury take a step back.

“Hey.” Phil squeezed Steve’s shoulder once. “Take a moment, and then explain as best you can.”

Steve spent his allotted moment getting to his feet and coming up close to the mirror so he could look at Bucky. She wore a tank top and soft cotton pants. She was probably divested of her wardrobe as soon as she crossed the threshold into SHIELD. The metal arm joined her body at the shoulder, not quite seamless. Her remaining arm was more sleekly muscular than it had been during the war, and her hair was longer than he’d ever known her to keep it. It fell to her shoulders, but it did nothing to hide the square line of her jaw, the set of her mouth, the eyes he still drew over and over in his notebooks. Wide and mischievous, blue like the ocean in winter. She looked strong — the way a thing broken and mended for durability rather than aesthetics looks strong. He pressed a hand to the glass.

“We grew up together,” he said. “She was my girl. Or, you know, I was her fella. The war came, and neither of us could do our parts because our bodies were not the bodies Uncle Sam wanted. So she did what she had to do. She bound her breasts, found a doctor to fudge the physical, and joined up anyway. That’s Sergeant James Barnes, and I thought I lost her off the side of a train.”

His words were met with resounding silence. Steve didn’t dare look back at their faces, so instead he took a breath and opened the door. He stepped into the interrogation room and closed the door behind him.

“Hi, Bucky,” he said.

She looked up at him and didn’t smile. 

“Hello, Steve.”

—

When Steve won Gabe’s watch, Falsworth’s boots, and all of Dernier’s future children in the poker pot, he decided to quit while he was ahead. He went to his private quarters, shucking his suspenders along the way, and when he closed the door and turned the light on, he found Bucky sitting on the edge of the bed, still in uniform. Her med kit sat on the floor by her feet.

“You know it ain’t right to fleece a bunch of your friends when you’re the only sober one,” she said, eyes twinkling. “And it ain’t right to keep a lady waiting.”

“You ain’t a lady,” Steve said automatically, mouth dry. Bucky smirked, and Steve felt his face burn. “I mean, you didn’t tell me…”

“What did you think an hour ago when I left the game and gave you that look?”

“I thought you were saying good night! You yawned all big and then folded!”

“You’re hopeless.” Bucky was toe to toe with him in the space of two strides, and she made a show of straightening his collar. She was close enough that Steve was able to smell her — clean, faint sweat and army-issue soap — and Steve’s breath quickened. And, God help him, his cock began to fill. His little buddy was a lot quicker to the draw these days, and it had been over a year since he and Bucky had last been together like this.

“It’s weird, you being so big and tall,” Bucky murmured. “I don’t know if I like it. Gonna need to try it out two or three times before I make a decision.”

“Bucky, I…”

“Shh.” Her hands felt like electricity on his bare skin where she’d pulled his shirt away. She cupped the back of his head in her palms. He leaned in. Against his lips she said, “I missed you too, you big sap.”

Kissing her felt like sharing laughs on the fire escape, watching Whit Wyatt hit a home run, setting off fire crackers at midnight — but for as much as it felt like a homecoming, it was disorienting, too. Steve was, for the first time in his whole life, taller than Bucky, and he found leaning down to taste her familiar mouth strange and exhilarating at once. She was not exactly a small woman — she was slender, but no more than a man would be, and tall enough not to arouse suspicion. He could feel the solid muscle of her, made whipcord and sinuous by a year at war, but his body dwarfed hers now. He found he could also move her at will — not that he would. 

They divested each other of their clothes, and Bucky stood before him naked but for the binding that flattened her breasts and created the reasonable illusion of male pectorals. She plucked a pair of clips from one side, and the binding unfurled. Steve stepped in close and put his arms around her to wind it off. When it was off all the way, she sighed in relief, and Steve cupped her breasts gently. They still fit pleasingly in one handful, but they were bigger — rather, her pectorals were bigger from lugging around upwards of fifty pounds of gear every day, and it had made her breasts fuller, firmer. They were also comically creased and indented from the binding. He laughed, and so did she, and they swallowed the sounds of their mirth in another kiss.

“Did you lock the door?” Bucky asked in a whisper.

“Yeah,” Steve said.

In answer, she gripped him by the root of his hard cock and pulled him along to the bed. He knelt on the edge of the mattress and watched her take in the breadth of his shoulders and chest. She visibly swallowed.

“Jesus, Steve,” she said. 

Steve felt his shoulders threaten to hunch inward. 

“Is it… not good?”

“It’s fine, it’s… nice,” she said. His dick was wilting, but she put her callused palms over his nipples and stroked the skin there, and the blood went right back to where it was. “It’s just different, you know?”

“Yeah, I had to get used to it, too.”

Bucky’s mouth tilted up in a lopsided smile.

“Bet you had all those pretty USO girls wrapped around your finger, you handsome shit.”

Steve just shrugged and blushed a little. “There may have been offers?”

“And?”

“And what?” Steve frowned. “I’ve already got a dame,” he said. “Only dame for me.”

Bucky maneuvered him onto the bed and lay on top of him. She propped herself up on her hands and looked down at him. He swept his hands up her back and through her shorn hair. Her nipples brushed his collarbone.

“You weren’t even tempted?”

Steve swept his hands down her back and settled them on the swell of her ass. “Buck, they can’t compare to you. It’s like… it’s like how the moon reflects the light of the sun. It’s beautiful, but it’s not the real thing.”

Her breath left her in a shudder, and she kissed him fiercely. She pressed one of her thighs between his and began rocking her hips. He squeezed her ass and ground into her harder. 

Steve gasped when she pulled away to get something from her med kit.

“I thought about you every day, Buck,” he said, and it rushed out of him like he was in confession. “I missed you like a phantom limb.”

She glanced up from her search and gave him a fond look. “And there was a goddamn hole in my chest the exact size and shape of Steven Grant Rogers.” Steve forced himself not to go all blubbery on her, but that was easy when she came back bed with the little pot of petroleum jelly from her med kit instead of the army-issue prophylactics.

“Did you lose all your rubbers in a poker game?” he asked, and she flicked his nipple in punishment. “Ah!”

“Shush,” she said. “And _no_ , I’m never putting those up, they’re like gold.” 

“Then what’s with—”

“You can’t tell me you forget what this is for, bub.”

“Yeah, but… I mean, we have rubbers. I won’t, you know—” Steve coughed delicately. “— knock you up.”

Bucky’s mouth quirked up. “Rogers, did you think every time I made you fuck me in the ass, I didn’t damn well enjoy myself?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Did _you_ enjoy yourself?”

“Um, yes, _obviously_.”

“Then I’m telling you that’s what I want tonight, and if you don’t then we’ll do it regular, but if you _do_ …”

“I do,” Steve said quickly. “I really, really do, just… c’mere.”

He gathered her in his arms and kissed her again. She was hard muscle and soft skin, square jaw and lush mouth. She was closeness and safety. She was the beat in his heart, the heat at the core of him. He cradled the back of her head in one hand and squeezed at her ass with the other. He could feel her slick his skin where she rubbed herself into his lap. He sucked at her breasts, savoring the scrape of her nails at his shoulders when he nipped them lightly. She pitched her hips against him forcefully, grinding her clitoris against the base of his penis. 

“Steve,” she said, voice low but urgent. “It’s been a year. I need my goddamn pipes cleaned out.”

“So romantic,” Steve sighed. 

“Buddy, I’ll give you romance, I’ll give you—” 

Steve stole her words away with a kiss, and then made her grunt in surprise by flipping her over onto her side with as much effort as he might use to swing open a door. He fitted himself in behind her and bit lightly at the juncture where her shoulder met her neck. She melted against him.

He pressed sucking kisses into her neck and behind her ear, careful not to leave marks. He pushed one of her legs up and slathered her anus with petroleum jelly. As he pressed one finger, two, three inside her, he whispered to her about how gorgeous she was, how he imagined her voice in his head making smart comments, how he’d longed for her tits in his mouth and his cock inside her and her body riveting him to the mattress. He opened her up and reduced her to muffled moans and wracking spine and rolling hips. 

Finally, finally, he spread petroleum jelly on his cock and eased it inside her. She choked back a groan and pushed into the penetration. It was tight and smooth, a grasping heat around him. He pressed his forehead against her shoulder while he calmed himself. 

“God, Buck.”

Bucky reached an arm back to tangle her hand in his hair and pull him in over her shoulder. She twisted to get close enough to kiss him, and she did, hard and deep as if she could crawl into him as surely as he was inside her. Steve kissed her back, swept his tongue in her mouth and did his best to memorize what it was like to be so close, and so big with love.

He wanted to put his fingers inside her other hole, wanted to stroke her clitoris until she came tightening around him, but his clean hand was up around her neck and his other wouldn’t do. He settled for a grope at her tits, which had her shoving back into him with erratic thrusts. 

“Touch yourself,” he murmured, and she needed no further encouragement. She’d barely gotten her fingers into her slit before she was writhing and shuddering hard, ass clamping around Steve’s dick like a vice. She shook in his arms, and the lingering reverberations of her orgasm pulled Steve’s from him abruptly. He smothered his gasp in her hair, jerking against the smooth curve of her ass and holding her tight as he rode it out.

Bucky summed it up succinctly. “Fuck.”

 

 

Afterward, Bucky lay sprawled behind him in her usual post-coital position, boneless and sated. Her breath was soft and warm in the space between his shoulder blades. Their feet were tangled.

“Bucky?” he whispered.

She hummed contentedly back at him.

“I really… I really do want to marry you.” She stiffened. “Wait! Just - just hear me out. I know I’ve never done it right before, so just… just let me.”

He slid out from underneath her and knelt at the side of the bed. Her face was mashed into the pillow, giving him the stink eye. He smiled, because she made him happy, even when she was mad at him.

“I don’t have a ring because, well, because it would be a bad idea out here. But I want you to know that I’ve been saving up, and as soon as this war is over I’m gonna get you a nice one made of, I don’t know, scrap metal from a tank or something because you would like that, and we’re gonna move into a bigger joint in a better part of town, and I’m gonna get a good job and spend every day working on being worthy of you. I’ve been in love with you since we were ankle biters, Buck. Will you please marry me?”

Bucky shifted and sat up, unselfconscious of her nudity. The sheet pooled around her hips, and her nipples tightened in the cool of the air. 

“You mean it.”

“Of course I do. I’ve never lied to you, Buck. Never.”

Steve was horrified to see her eyes begin to shine and her mouth fail to contain a tremble.

“Oh, Bucky, no—”

“Shut up,” she said, and pulled him down to tumble back into bed. He found himself caught in a searing kiss, Bucky’s tongue insistent against his as she clambered over him. When she pulled back, Steve heaved in a lungful of air. “Of course I’ll marry you, you knucklehead.”

Steve almost shouted, but Bucky slapped her hand over his mouth to stifle him, and then they were both laughing, and laughing more at the effort it took to do it quietly, and then they were kissing again, and Steve was so, so happy.

—

Steve pulled his chair away from the table and sat in it, holding Bucky’s gaze all the while. He sat down and clasped his hands together on the table.

“So,” he said. “You come here often?”

That got him the faintest of smiles.

“What else you got, Rogers?”

“Oh, you know. Pretty girl like you in a dive like this, did it hurt when you fell from heaven, don’t I know you from somewhere?” Steve didn’t let her break eye contact. Her smile got wider — and more brittle.

“Still hopeless,” she said. “But I like you anyway.”

“You look good.”

Bucky snorted.

“Now I know you’re lyin’.” She was unkempt and a bit dirty, but then they’d all been like that on the front. She’d looked worse and Steve had still thought she was the sun in his sky.

“I don’t lie to you,” Steve said. “You know that.”

Steve caught a tremor in her expression, but it was enough. He took a gamble and slid his chair around the corner of the table, closer to her. He didn’t reach out to touch, and neither did she. 

“Tell me what’s happening, Buck. Whatever it is, you and me, we can fix it. We always have.”

Her eyes shuttered and she sat back. Steve felt as if a cord had snapped and left him untethered.

“Look at you,” she said with a scoff. “Still so earnest and upright. Used to drive me nuts. Well, Stevie, times have changed. You should get yourself a new girl, take her out on the town now that you can afford it. Maybe Natasha, she’s a bit punishing in the sack. I know you like that.” A salacious wink. “Plus you already know her, so you won’t shit your pants at the prospect of talking to her.”

Steve just laced his fingers together and gave her a bland smile. She scowled.

“That’s my girl, always looking out for me.”

Bucky looked increasingly irritated. 

“You gotta stop waiting on me, is my point. Live your life. Eat, drink, fuck. You and me — that’s seventy years in the past for me. I just came to tell you that.”

“Oh, so this was just a courtesy visit? Awfully nice of the Winter Soldier. Am I on your Christmas card list, too? Is the greeting written with the blood of your enemies?” Steve forced himself not to wince. He’d apologize later, if this whole thing didn’t end up with Bucky juggling his head in that metal hand of hers.

Bucky clenched her jaw, eyes sparking. _There she is_ , Steve thought. 

“Forget me, Rogers. I’m not the girl you been missing.”

“Seems to me, if you’d never come, I’d never have known you weren’t dead, so forgive me if your logic isn’t my logic right now.”

Bucky sat up as straight as she could with her arm bolted down like that. With that one movement, she looked cool and collected, and behind her eyes was nothing of the woman Steve had loved. He felt a chill trickle down his spine.

“Look at you, with your modern-speak,” she said, faintly mocking. All traces of a smile left her expression. “And if I said I came to kill you?”

“More believable,” Steve said, eyes fixed on hers.

“How about if I said it’s because I’m a selfish bitch, and I wanted one last look at you before I told your spooks to take me out?”

Steve faltered, and Bucky, damn her, she saw. 

“This is not a game, Rogers,” she snapped. “This is not some rom-com where we banter so hard I give up my evil ways and you get the girl. Do you know how many people I’ve killed?” She laughed then, a harsh, sharp sound that echoed in the emptiness of the room and scraped at Steve’s eardrums. “I’m a rabid dog, Steve. And rabid dogs need to be put down.” 

She rattled her metal arm, eyes blazing. Steve forced himself to keep looking into them. 

“But not before one last talk,” she said softly. “Because I’m low enough to break your heart all over again if it meant seeing that dumb mug in the flesh one more time.” 

Steve felt weak in a way he never felt anymore. He felt like a 120-pound asthmatic running a marathon without a meal in his belly. He gave up all his pretenses and leaned in, imploring. 

“Whatever it is, Bucky, we can fix it,” he said. “SHIELD’s done it before and they’ll do it again.” He forced out a wooden smile. “Suckers for strays and underdogs, even rabid ones. Please, Buck. It’s you and me we’re talking about. There’s never been a problem we ain’t been able to solve.”

She gave him a real smile then, 100% Bucky Barnes, sad and true.

“Nothing but seventy years of blood and death, darlin’. You and me — we’re weapons. Just so happens I ended up in the wrong hands. It’s time to be decommissioned.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that, Buck. Look at Natasha — she’s a hero.”

“Natasha was a Red Room operative for barely fifteen years, and they got her when she was a child. Anything she did is not her fault, and is a blip compared to my kill count.”

“What you did isn’t your fault either, adult or not. I know what tactics they used. No one could have withstood that, Bucky. No one, I promise you.”

“You think that changes anything? You think that means these hands, _my hands_ , didn’t take lives? You think some fancy semantics makes any difference? Grow up, Steve. I live in the real world, and word on the street is you won’t even leave your ivory tower. Still being bankrolled by a Stark, I see. You fucking _child_.”

“You’re not good at riling me up, Bucky.”

“That’s not my name anymore. Stupid goddamn name, anyway.”

“I wonder how many men I’ve killed. I lost count in the first month I was in combat.”

Bucky scoffed. “ _Nazis_ ,” she said. 

“Men,” Steve said gently. “With families, and fears, and grief, and bad jokes to tell and mistakes to be made and joys to be celebrated. Just men, Buck.”

“Don’t tell me you swallow that ‘just following orders’ bullshit. You know that’s the worst excuse since _I didn’t mean it_.”

Steve shrugged. “I read a lot, after I landed in this century,” he said. “Things aren’t black and white. A lot worse stuff was happening in the war that we never knew about. Genocide.”

“I know that,” Bucky snarled, face reddening. 

“But not until after. A lot of the German people never knew until after, either. It makes me wonder how many German soldiers could have known, if they weren’t stationed at the camps. And what about the other side of the coin? The Americans haven’t exactly been saints. Do you know what the lingering effects of the atomic bombs have been? And do you know what we did to Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor? How about all the civilians our side has killed in the last fifty years of conflict? How about how we’ve treated prisoners of war? All I can make of this, Bucky, is that war makes villains and victims of us all. Every last one of us who was ever on the ground with a gun in our hands, well. We’re just… collateral damage.” 

“Saint Steve,” Bucky said with a sneer. “Forgiving Nazis and assassins, just like that.” She snapped the fingers of her right hand. “Let me swoon at your feet.”

Steve sat up straight. Resolve settled over him, and his doubts seeped away. 

“You let Natasha catch you. You asked for me by name. You’ve sat here and haven’t even tried to free that newfangled arm of yours. You didn’t come here to die, Buck. You came for one last chance. And I’m offering it to you.”

He stood and held out his hand as if for a shake.

There was a pause during which Steve’s hand hung in the air, a suspended note with no follow up. Then, after a moment, Bucky took it.

—

Gabe was the one who noticed Steve limping while they were setting up camp. He gave Steve a look like he couldn’t believe what a fat-head Steve was. Steve froze and started to protest, but before a word could come out of his mouth, Gabe had shouted out to everyone.

“Captain’s hit!” 

Steve sent Gabe a sour look, but Gabe only looked vaguely smug.

In three seconds he was surrounded by four Commandos bearing first aid kits, and one self-satisfied Gabe Jones. They each got flashlights out and scanned him until they found a bloody hole in his pant leg.

“Guys, I’m fine,” Steve said. “It’ll heal up.”

“Not if there’s still a bullet in there,” Dum Dum said gruffly. He frowned. “Or maybe it’ll heal with the bullet still inside, and you can use it to impress dames.”

“It’s probably already healed over some,” Bucky said. “We need to dig it out.” She scowled at him. “You can’t do this kind of thing, Cap.”

Falsworth shoved Steve into a seated position on a log, and Dernier cocked his head at him and said, “Captain, I hope this does not make you feel cheap, but I promise I will still respect you in the morning. Now take off your trousers.”

Laughs rose up around them and Steve snorted. He stood, leaning on Falsworth, and shuffled his pants off. Wolf whistles and cat calls disguised his hissing as he peeled the fabric from the wound. He made the mistake of glancing at Bucky, who had blanched but for furious splotches of red streaking her cheekbones. Steve tried to tell her with his eyes that he was sorry for scaring her, but he could barely count on his _mouth_ to say the right thing, much less other, nonverbal parts of him. Bucky shook her head and came closer with her kit, but refused to look up at him.

“I’ll do it,” she said irritably. “Got enough practice back home with this one.”

“Pick bullets out of our boy lots, Barnes?” said Dum Dum.

“Get your damn flashlights over here and be useful,” Bucky said. 

Bucky sat and pulled Steve’s leg over her lap. The Commandos shone their lights on the wound in his calf, which was small and dark and bleeding. Sure enough, there was the lump of a bullet, and though the skin was visibly knitting back together — something that made Morita gag — it could not heal all the way. Bucky let out a gusty sigh and turned to her side to rummage in a duffle. She pulled out a bottle of hooch, uncapped it, and poured it over her hands. Then she tipped the bottle over the wound. Steve gave a shout at the sudden burn and his body jerked, but Falsworth and Dernier held him as still as they could. 

“Morphine’ll metabolize too quick,” Bucky muttered. “So you’re just gonna have to grin and bear it, Rogers.” That was as much warning as he got before she produced razor and sliced the entrance wound open again. Steve clenched his teeth and breathed hard, eyes squeezed shut and sweat beading on his brow, but he didn’t cry out again. Falsworth and Dernier each had him by a shoulder and gripped him steady. He felt Dum Dum’s big paw ruffle his hair and then just rest there. 

“Hemostat,” he heard Bucky say. Gabe must have been assisting, because a moment later Steve felt metal enter the wound and every tiny movement pried his flesh apart. He ground his teeth together and forced himself not to howl.

“Breathe, Cap,” came Morita’s voice, and Steve hauled breath into his lungs. 

“Got it,” Bucky said, and the hemostat was removed from his leg along with the burn of the lodged bullet. Steve sagged, panting, and all five of the guys were there giving him big slaps on the shoulder.

“Thanks, Bucky,” he said when he was able to open his eyes. He saw her standing before him wiping her hands with the hooch she’d used to clean off his blood. She just shook her head, but the guys flanked her and began slapping _her_ on the back.

“Field medic Barnes saves the day!” Morita said.

“He deserves a goddamn medal, dealing with this stubborn lug.” said Gabe.

“What he _deserves_ ,” Dum Dum said, “is a goddamn drink!”

“God yes,” Falsworth said. “Where is the alcohol?”

“Patience, you heathens,” Dernier said, and disappeared. He came back with everyone’s canteen cup and Gabe poured what was left of the hooch into them. “You too, Cap,” Dernier said, “super metabolism or _non_.” Steve didn’t object to the cup shoved into his hands.

“To Bucky Barnes,” he said, raising his cup and meeting her eyes. “Always hauling my ass out of the fire.”

There was a chorus of Bucky’s name, and they all knocked their drinks back.

 

 

Usually, Bucky set up her bivvy next to Steve’s — a respectable distance away, but next to him. Tonight, she was a ways off, by herself but not outside the bounds of the camp they’d set up. Steve nodded at Falsworth, who had first watch, as he dragged his bivvy over to Bucky and plonked down.

“You know most people would take being as far away from you as possible as a sign a fella doesn’t wanna talk,” Bucky said, voice low. 

“Didn’t get to tell you I was sorry, earlier.”

“You ain’t sorry, you just wish I weren’t mad.”

“No, I —” Steve cut himself off and sighed. “I realize it was a stupid move. I thought the healing factor would push the bullet out on its own. I was wrong, and my not telling anyone could have put the whole team in danger. So yes, I am actually sorry.” Steve scrubbed a hand through his hair. He was talking at Bucky’s back, her shoulders hunched in and knees drawn up so her body made the smallest shape possible. He pitched his voice down to a whisper. “And I’m sorry you’re the one who had to dig it out of me.”

“You know how many times I’ve stitched you up?”

“Too many to count.” _But not this time_ , he thought. He wisely kept his mouth shut on that one.

“You’re damn right, too many to count. You have no respect for your own limits. You never have.”

“Hey. Hey. I’m a super soldier now. I’ve knocked out Adolf Hitler over two hundred times. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Bucky wiggled until she was on her other side and able to glare at Steve properly.

“You still have squishy red insides and are killable, last I heard. And I—” She swallowed and ground her teeth. “I hate seeing you bleed. I always have.”

“We’re in a war, Buck,” Steve said gently. 

Bucky’s mouth made a perfect arch. Steve wished he had the freedom to trace it with his thumb.

“You joined up first,” he said, and punched her shoulder lightly. More of a gentle bump, really. “Had to come make sure you weren’t making trouble.” 

She managed to crack a small, twisty smile at him. “My hero,” she said.

“Nope,” Steve said. He squeezed her shoulder once and pulled back before he could give in to the urge to linger. “ _My_ hero.”

—

Apparently, SHIELD had a whole division for mind control: the studying of it and the breaking people of it.

“And doing some of their own?” Steve asked, suspicious.

“Of course not,” Phil said mildly, Agent Coulson mask firmly in place. It made Steve want to trust him, which made Steve not trust him.

“I’d like to know what you’re doing to her,” he said. “Sir.”

Bucky had been collected by some lab coats and led away with her arms handcuffed behind her back. Natasha was allowed to go with her, but Fury had staid Steve with a hand on his shoulder. Without saying a word, he left, and Phil and Steve were alone in the interrogation room. That would last until Tony barged in, but for now, he had to ask.

“Nothing they didn’t do to Natasha, Captain,” Phil said. “She’ll have some freedom of movement. This isn’t prison. You’ll be allowed to visit her.” Phil was looking off in the direction of Steve’s right ear.

“…Phil?”

“We should go debrief the rest of the team,” Phil said, moving toward the door.

“Wait. Just — wait. Please.”

Phil went still but didn’t turn back.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Steve said. “I couldn’t tell anyone. She’d taken a big risk back then, and the punishment was arrest, and prison, and being branded a pervert and dishonorably discharged. I’d made her a promise, and that was never something I could compromise, no matter how much time had passed. Can you understand that?”

Finally Phil dropped his hand from the doorknob and looked up at him. He looked worn around the edges, but not angry. 

“I do understand,” he said. “I’m just feeling stupid, and lied to, and… _so, so embarrassed_ , and understanding why doesn’t actually stop me from feeling those things. Emotions are tricky like that.”

“Technically I didn’t lie to you,” Steve said, and then winced when Phil’s face hardened.

“You deliberately misled me,” Phil said. “Like I said, Steve, I understand why. I really do. I’ll get over it, and we’ll all be double dating in no time, I’m sure.” He opened the door and Tony sprang inside like a jack-in-the-box. 

“So I’m building her a new arm, right?” he said. “I mean that one is so last century, makes a terrible silhouette, how’s a discerning assassin supposed to go out on the town like that? I mean, she’s obviously a summer, what a misnomer, and the arm’s all winter cools, talk about a faux pas. My point is, I can do better.”

Phil brushed past him and Steve followed, Tony at their heels talking a mile a minute in a language Steve was beginning to think was not English.

“Does Tony breathe?” Steve said aloud to no one in particular.

“We think he’s developed a way to absorb oxygen through his pores,” Bruce said with a sympathetic shrug. 

“R&D will fit her with a state of the art prosthesis, Mr. Stark,” Phil said briskly. He was heading toward the elevators. Clint gave them all a big cheery wave before falling into step with him, and the two of them disappeared down a hallway.

Steve sighed and rubbed a hand over his face.

“I think I’ll go home,” he said. “And…punch something.”

“What crawled up his butt?” Tony said. He cocked his head.

“Turns out my boyfriend is my girlfriend,” Steve said. 

Tony frowned. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Frowned harder.

“I need a joke here but I’m coming up blank,” he said. “Help me out, Bruce.”

“Wait, who’s your boyfriend in this scenario?” Bruce said.

“Bucky Barnes,” Steve said.

“And who’s your girlfriend?”

“Bucky Barnes.”

Bruce stared. “I got nothing, Tony,” he said. “Steve, you said something about home? Split a cab?”

“Get outta here with that proletariat talk,” Tony said. He waved a hand between Steve and Bruce and finally inserted himself into the space between them to stride toward the elevators. “Happy’ll take us.”

 

 

In Tony’s car, Steve tried to brood out the window, but Tony wouldn’t let him.

“So, do I get to hear about this _Twelfth Night_ escapade you’re apparently having in the bedroom?” he said. “Sounds kinky; it makes me like you better. Hey, have you ever thought about me, you, Pep, and some electrodes? Because let me tell you—”

“I may have implied to Phil that I was homosexual, but I’m not.”

Tony’s mouth snapped shut with an audible clink. Bruce was staring at him with a look more pained than his normal expression.

“Why?” Bruce said.

“Were you thinking of you, him, Clint, and some electrodes? Because that’s okay, everyone has stray thoughts like that, you shouldn’t be ashamed, you should talk about it with a trusted friend, which, incidentally—” 

“Tony.” Bruce flung a hand back and slapped Tony’s arm to shut him up, but his gaze remained intent on Steve. 

Steve shrugged unevenly and looked down at his hands. Sometimes it still made him blink, made him disbelieve his eyes, to have such big hands. 

“He guessed about me and Bucky,” he said. “He didn’t know Buck was a dame, and it wasn’t my place to tell him so. But I was so tired of hiding the fact that she was my sweetheart, I just… let him assume. Because he had it right, you know? Me and her, we were together for ages. The mechanics of the thing hardly seemed to matter when she was dead. But now she’s not, and he had to find out like that.”

“Whoa whoa whoa, what do you mean, _now she’s not dead_?” Bruce said.

“Bucky Barnes was a lady?” Tony said, voice too loud. “Now I have to go back and read all my comics with the knowledge that you were hitting it with your lady sergeant.” 

“ _She’s not a lady!_ ” Steve said, and when both Bruce and Tony flinched back, he realized he’d shouted. “Sorry,” he said, breathless. He closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he opened them, Tony was handing him a glass of Scotch, neat. “I can’t get drunk,” he said.

“Doesn’t mean you don’t need a drink,” Tony said. Steve poured all three fingers of it down his throat and savored the burn. It was sharp and hot and the sensation of it brought things into focus. He trust the glass back at Tony, who obliged him with three more fingers.

“Can we go back to where your dead girlfriend has found the secret to resurrection?” Bruce said. He added in a tiny voice, “And is possibly a shapeshifter?”

“What? She isn’t…” Steve sighed. “She was pretending to be a man so she could join the army.”

“What about turning her head and coughing?” Tony said.

“Sympathetic physician.”

“What about popping a squat while everyone else drained the dragon?”

“Oh my God,” Bruce said.

“What about keeping your buns out of her oven?”

“Look Tony, she _handled_ it, okay?” Steve said. 

“There’s a long history of women in combat, Tony,” Bruce said. “Go read some Maxine Hong Kingston. Now, about the part where she’s alive…”

“She’s the Winter Soldier.”

In the resulting silence, Steve drained his glass.

—

What Steve remembered most about his mother’s wake was how much casserole accumulated on the table in Mrs. Barnes’s little apartment.

Steve himself had accepted all the condolence casseroles with a solemn nod of thanks, but now all the adults were milling around talking to each other. He crept into Bucky’s room, and then into her tiny closet, where he closed the door and sat with his back against the drywall and his head buried in his knees. He shook, but his eyes were dry. He thought he’d used up all his tears these last few months while Mama was dying. Tuberculosis had “damn near turned her inside out,” he’d heard someone in the other room say.

Suddenly the door to the closet swung open and Steve squinted against the light. Bucky stood in the doorway, feet planted a firm shoulder-width apart, hands on hips and head cocked. She was in tights and a dark green dress, her hair falling out of matching ribbons. The tights were scuffed and had runs in them, new from when he last saw her just an hour ago. She had a smudge of dirt on her cheek and an accusing look in her eye.

Bucky Barnes was a year older than Steve — ten years old and a woman of the world. Steve wanted to hold her hand.

“Are you cryin’ in there?” she demanded.

“No!”

“Oh. Fine.” She closed the door behind her and sat down next to him. The closet was so small it seemed like half of her was crushing half of him. He didn’t mind. “My ma says you’re coming to live with us.”

“I guess so,” Steve said.

“I’m gonna miss your ma’s lemon meringue.”

“Me too.”

“She was a classy dame.”

“Thanks.”

“So if you want to be sad and cry, I won’t tell no one.”

Steve nodded and tried to thank her again, but he coughed instead, and his cough turned into a sob, and then he was crying all those tears he thought he’d used up. Buckets, truckloads, a flood of Biblical proportions. He cried and cried until he thought he might throw up. But he didn’t, because Bucky’s grubby hand was warm and small between his shoulder blades, and she didn’t say another word.

 

 

What Steve remembered most about Bucky’s mother’s wake was that there wasn’t one, and he and Bucky were hauled off to the sisters at St. Augustine’s Home for Displaced Children as soon as the body was removed.

 

 

Steve woke gasping in sweat-soaked sheets. He blinked and blinked but there was no light. It was just like going blind. 

“Bucky?” he whispered. He groped for her at his side, but there was nothing. He scrabbled frantically for her, but as the dreams faded, yesterday came back to him with violent force.

Bucky had plummeted from the side of a mountain because Steve hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t been strong enough, hadn’t been brave enough. Steve had looked her in the eyes and betrayed her. Bucky Barnes was dead, and it was Steve Rogers’s fault.

Steve rolled over just as his stomach seized, and he made a mess of the floor instead of the bed. 

Just then, the air raid sirens began to blare.

—

What remained of the Red Room was not prepared to give up its greatest asset.

“This was to be expected,” Fury said in a conversational tone. He put his boot on the body Steve had just felled. Steve was breathing hard, and Iron Man landed beside him. Distantly, Steve heard the roar of the Hulk. Fury leveled his unwavering gaze at Steve. “They came for Natasha, once upon a time. They were not a match for us.”

Steve peeled off his mask, savoring the cool air on his skin.

“And how did you make them stop?” he asked.

“I made them see the error of their ways.”

 

 

The first time Steve was allowed to visit Bucky, he found that she had shorn her hair. It was as short as it had been in the army.

“It looks good,” he told her, barely containing the hand that itched to run through it. “More like you.”

“Pff.” She fiddled with the decidedly less than state of the art prosthesis SHIELD had fitted her with — a temporary one while they built her a custom job. “What do you know about me, Rogers?”

“A lot.”

Her answering smile was mocking, lopsided as ever. He wanted to kiss the corner where it curled up higher than the other. He didn’t.

 

 

Steve drew, printed, and bound a short graphic novel called “Super Agent.” In it, Phil saved a burning bus full of school children from dragons before his morning coffee and got same-sex marriage legalized nation-wide after lunch. He helped old ladies at their bake sale, then neutralized them with his hand to hand combat skills and a spatula when they turned out to be hell beasts sent to control humanity. Before heading home for dinner, he picked up tulips for his sweetheart, and the comic ended with him kissing a very scantily clad Hawkeye over a demon riddled with arrows.

“All in a day’s work,” it said at the end.

He presented it to Phil with his eyes as wide as they’d go, because Phil was susceptible like that and Steve wasn’t too proud to exploit it. Phil very valiantly did not explode with glee.

“I forgive you,” he said quickly, voice an octave higher than it usually was. 

Steve couldn’t reply, because the air was knocked out of him when two stocky men tackled him in an embrace and wouldn’t let go.

 

 

The fourth time Steve was allowed to visit Bucky, he brought her a box of six cannoli.

“It’s not quite Mrs. DeProdocini’s, but.” He shrugged. Mrs. DeProdocini had been old when they’d last seen her in 1942, and very proprietary about her recipe. He didn’t hold out hope for either of the two to have made it to the twenty-first century.

Bucky ate half of one in ten seconds and declared it “not bad.”

“It’s this little place Bruce knows,” Steve said. “Hole in the wall.”

Bucky polished off the second half and took her time wiping the crumbs and cream off her face unselfconsciously.

“Is this what we’re doing now, Steve?” she said when she was done. “Small talk? Now I know I’m in hell.”

“Tell me what you want to talk about and we’ll talk about that instead.”

“My kill list.”

“I’m not a priest. I’ve got no absolution for you.”

“Fuck you.”

“You just say the word, doll.”

Steve left with a whole cannoli smashed into his hair and half an erection in his pants.

 

 

“You are not made for espionage,” Natasha said. She sounded neutral but Steve had learned to detect the complaint.

“I know, sorry,” Steve said. They were in Hong Kong, waiting to make contact with a suspected Red Room operative. Clint was patrolling the perimeter, but otherwise, it was just them, and Steve was a gigantic blond white man in the middle of Asia. He understood now why she’d objected to his presence on the mission, but Fury had insisted Steve would be the flame to the operative’s moth, and so here he was.

He felt Natasha staring at him. He let her. He didn’t know what else he could do. He promised himself he’d make more time to get to know Natasha back in the city. Being more cohesive with her could only benefit the team. Besides, she was Clint’s best friend, and, Steve was given to understand, the only person Bucky didn't needle endlessly during visits.

And then, “I heard you used to be small and adorable, like a chipmunk.”

Steve frowned. “I don’t know if _chipmunk_ is really how I’d describe it…”

“‘Chipmunk’ was definitely the word in question.”

“Um.”

“Yasha misses the chipmunk.”

“Did she _tell_ you that?”

“I don’t have to be _told_ things.” And God help him, she sounded offended. 

Before Steve could say anything, Natasha dropped into a crouch, gun at the ready, and there was no more talk.

 

 

The tenth time Steve was allowed to visit Bucky, she was red around the eyes, and she wore no prosthesis. It was his first look at what was left of her arm. The stump terminated mid-humerus, and the skin at the end was white and shiny. It puckered, here and there, imperfect healing. He rushed to her side, but stopped just short of touching her.

“What happened, Bucky, are you okay?” 

“I’m fine, don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m just tired is all. I’ve spent enough goddamn time being prodded in a lab for three lifetimes.”

“I’ll talk to someone, see what the holdup is.” 

Bucky laughed a bitter, ugly laugh, and when she was done, her mouth remained twisted in a sneer.

“Don’t you get it? God, it’s lucky you’re so pretty because you’ve got no goddamn brains.”

“Ah, the insults are back. I had so missed them.”

“The _holdup_ , Captain Tight-ass, is I’m not like Natasha. The _holdup_ is I’m not fixable. There’s nothing they can do to stop me from being a one-woman weapon of mass destruction, but they won’t admit it because Steve Rogers has such pretty baby blues.”

Steve shook his head. “No, Bucky, you’ve got it wrong. It just takes time is all.”

“Wake up and smell the bullshit, Steve. Get out of my cell and forget about me.”

 

 

It was week seven of Phil and Steve’s daily jog around Central Park when Steve said, “You don’t need me to come with you.”

Their feet pounded the pavement, and Steve’s hearing picked up the harsh notes of both their breathing. 

“No,” Phil said after a moment. “My stress tests and EKGs have been clean for a year.”

“Damnit, Phil.”

“Don’t say that too loud, you’ll scandalize everyone. _The D-word_.”

“You know I don’t like to leave the Tower unless there’s—” He bit off the rest of that sentence and clenched his jaw. 

“Yeah,” Phil said. “I know.”

 

 

The thirteenth time Steve was allowed to visit Bucky, the stump was red and enflamed from all the different prosthesis prototypes SHIELD had her trying on. At his horrified look, she smirked and waved it a little.

“Give us a kiss, Stevie,” she said. 

He caught her by the waist and pressed a hand into her shoulder to still her. He bent to kiss the stump where the flesh was roughest, reddest. It was hot against his lips.

When he stepped away, Bucky was breathing quick and looking at him like he’d just hatched out of the moon and started bugling.

“Did that make it better?” he asked, and cleared his throat when his voice came out all rumbly.

“Maybe,” she said. 

A slow smile started in the corners of Steve’s mouth.

“Should I try again and see?”

“Maybe.”

“Why Ms. Barnes, I do believe you’re being coy.”

“Shut up and kiss my stump, Rogers.”

 

 

Steve watched impassively as Iron Man dumped a sniveling wreck of a man onto the Helicarrier at Fury, Hill, and Coulson’s feet. 

“Oops, dropped the cargo, oops,” Tony said. Steve poked at his Starklet as he made a slow circle around said cargo.

“Dr. Zola, what a surprise. Been a long time. You’re looking shockingly well-preserved.” He hadn’t changed much, but for the way his skin had grown tough and grey, like a rock.

“Captain Rogers, I am very confused,” Fury said, each syllable exaggerated for maximum effect on the prisoner. “Please tell me why there is a heinously ugly Nazi on my aircraft.”

“Well, Director Fury,” Steve said in his very best helpful salesman voice, “according to the intel we’ve collected over this past year of making all his operatives squeal, Dr. Zola found himself in a very unfortunate position after Schmidt went down, and he ended up making a deal with the Soviets. His version of the super-soldier serum, while a bit of a disaster on men, as we can see, seemed to work beautifully on women. Especially little girls. Thus the Red Room was born. Director Fury, we have in our hands the man responsible for kidnapping, brainwashing, and enslaving at least five hundred and forty three women and girls over the past seventy years.”

“I had no choice!” Zola cried out. “I had no choice, my life was _threatened_.” He got to his knees and clasped his gnarled hands together before him. “Please. I know you to be a righteous man, Captain. Please, have mercy.”

Natasha emerged from some shadow or another. Steve registered Fury’s surprise — the smallest hitch of a shoulder — but he didn’t stop Natasha when she approached, unauthorized. Steve stepped back.

“This is what mercy looks like,” Natasha said, and snapped Zola’s neck. 

 

 

The fifteenth time Steve was allowed to visit Bucky, she was unconscious in a hospital bed. He sat beside her for hours, stroking her hand.

 

 

Steve asked Phil and Clint to help him paint one of the spare rooms blue, Bucky’s favorite color.

“You know she’s gonna want to sleep with you in your room, right Cap?” Clint said.

“I don’t want her to feel pressured, or like she owes me something, or like I expect anything,” Steve said. “I didn’t even really ask if she wanted to move in with me again. Oh God, am I messing it all up? I’m messing it all up.”

“Deep breaths, Steve,” Phil said. “Let’s go paint some walls.”

 

 

The last time Steve would ever visit Bucky in the mind control division, he arrived to find she had finally gotten a new arm. In the end, she decided to go with a plain old prosthesis. Well, as “plain” and “old” as a prosthesis that fancy could get. It weighed less than a third of what a real arm would, looked like flesh and blood, and was damn near indestructible. The point was, it had no bells and whistles. No hidden Starklet like Tony suggested, or the gum ball machine Clint had wanted, or the guns and lasers that SHIELD had been pushing. It was just biosensors and silicone. 

“I told them I’m tired of being a weapon,” she said to Steve when he got a good eyeful of it.

“It’s real nice, Buck,” Steve said. She’d smiled, and carefully laid her false hand on his face. He turned to kiss the palm.

“I can feel that,” she whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Like, electricity. Not like how anything else feels. Sparklers on the fourth of July.”

He kissed it again. And again.

She was being released the next day, but Steve told Tony he couldn’t throw her a welcome home party.

“She’s never been here before, how can it be home?” Steve said.

Tony had looked at him like he’d just asked for an abacus when offered a calculator, then suggested a “mazel tov on the jailbreak” party instead.

“She wasn’t imprisoned, Tony,” Steve said, exasperated. “Or Jewish.”

“Oh my God, you are literally the most boring person I’ve ever met, and I’ve been down to SI accounting.”

In the end, weeks after Bucky had moved into Steve’s apartment, there was a “congratulations on the new arm” party, and the Avengers welcomed her with clear eyes and open arms. 

Steve didn’t have much experience of family. He thought he could get used to it.

—

He knew this game. If only he could see, if only he could move.

He’d laugh. He’d heckle. He’d cheer.

Bucky’s voice in his ear, shouting. “Becker’s playing like my grandma out there!” 

Stickiness under Steve’s feet, the cool of the bleachers seeping into his bony backside.

“They oughta trade him out!” Bucky was saying. Hands cupped around her mouth to amplify the sound. “Hey Dressen wanna see if my grandma’s available?”

Popcorn and cut grass, the smack of bat against ball, the roar of the crowd, peanuts shells underfoot. An elbow in his ribs.

“Steve, hey Steve, are you paying attention? I can’t figure why Becker’s on the field except Dressen’s taken one too many balls to the head.”

“ _Bucky_ ,” he gasped.

—And when he could finally blink his heavy eyes open, she was gone and the white of the ceiling was searing and the air was wrong and _stale_ and what the hell was that game doing on the wireless?

HYDRA had found him before the US could, before Howard could. A four-year-old ball game seemed a rookie mistake to make, but maybe they were looking to disorient him rather than fool him. Good effort, better luck next time.

He didn’t want to have to hit the would-be WAC they’d sent in to fool him, but, well. He would if he had to.

He fought his way to a brave new world and it was nothing, _nothing_ like he’d imagined. The lights and colors and sounds fired at him, huge and overwhelming and relentless, and all he could think was, _I’m late._

—

On a warm evening in late spring, Bucky enticed Steve outside with the promise of ice cream. He got chocolate with bits of brownie in, she got birthday cake with sprinkles. They both got waffle cones, and when they left with their purchases in hand, Bucky linked her false arm in Steve’s free one and they got off the busy sidewalks where they were likely to be bowled over by New Yorkers in a hurry to get nowhere in particular. In Paley Park, they found an open table by the waterfall.

They ate their ice cream in contented silence until suddenly Bucky said, “You know what I love about now? Frigging ice cream. When we were kids, 1.) good luck getting ice cream, Jesus Christ, and 2.) you got two flavors, three if you were lucky. Now? Now there’s ice cream of any flavor you can imagine, and the texture’s perfect, and it all tastes good no matter how weird it sounds. I saw sweet corn ice cream with popcorn and bacon in it the other day, did I tell you?”

“I saw chocolate chili basil once,” Steve said. 

“And I bet it was delicious. This is what I’m saying. Life’s good, Rogers.”

Steve was fairly sure he had a sappy look on his face gazing at her, and he only went back to his cone when he felt the ice cream drip on his fingers. 

“Life’s good,” Steve said. Bucky turned from the waterfall to look at him, eyes going calculating when she caught him licking chocolate off his hand. She quirked an eyebrow at him and he half-smiled and bounced one shoulder in a shrug. She made a huffy kind of laugh, one short puff of air out her nostrils, and looked at the waterfall again. “You really think so?”

“Steve. Of course I do. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m free and I’m eating ice cream with my fella. What more could anyone want?”

Steve shook his head. “A lotta things,” he said. He hunched his shoulders. “Sometimes when I close my eyes all I can see is you clinging to the side of that train. I should have saved you.”

Bucky didn’t say anything for a moment. Steve watched her take chunks out of her ice cream — biting, not licking. She had a sprinkle stuck to her cheek; he reached over and plucked it off. Then he shrugged and ate it. Bucky’s mouth curved up.

“You did, you know,” she said. 

“All I did at SHIELD was offer you something you’d already decided to take.”

“No, before that. Come on, Steve, I thought you knew this.”

Steve hid the threatening pout by taking a mouthful of chocolate and brownie.

“Enlighten me,” he said.

“You were big news when they dug you out of that iceberg,” Bucky said. “All over the world, the headline was _CAPTAIN AMERICA FOUND - AND HE’S ALIVE!_ And then the Chitauri happened, and you were in the public eye again. Just like you and your dancing girls, only a million times worse because every yahoo with a cell phone can get a picture of you buying toilet paper and sell it to the highest bidder. _CAPTAIN AMERICA WIPES HIS OWN ASS_.”

“Actually, Tony has people for that,” Steve said. His eyes widened. “I mean! To buy toilet paper!”

Bucky gave him _a look_. 

“Anyway, Cap stuff was suddenly everywhere. Everyone and their grandma was a regular Phil Coulson. It got harder for my handlers to keep the memories under. I knew your face, even if I didn’t know why. I… I _longed_ for you like fucking Juliet, and I didn’t know why. There was a hit out on you — there’s always a hit out on you — but they knew what was happening to me and nothing they could do was stopping it. They didn’t dare send me to do the job. I started getting, I don’t know, flashes. Images. You and me. You, drawing. You, laughing. Your hands on me. Your mouth. I knew you, and I needed you, and I followed you. I got away from them and I found myself while I was looking for you, and hoo boy, Steve, that was not… pleasant. Suddenly I remembered everything. But most of all, I remembered you, and the boy in my memories kept me from… bad life choices. I’ll just see him one more time, I told myself. If I could just talk to him one more time.” 

Steve was staring, and then his ice cream slid off the cone and plopped onto the ground. Bucky burst into cackles. Steve dropped to his knees with some napkins to pick the scoop up off the ground when he felt a pinch on his backside. He yelped and twisted around. Bucky’s innocent face was the most suspect expression he’d ever seen on anybody.

“Yeah, I remembered that too,” she said.

“We’re in public,” Steve whispered.

Bucky stood up and took the soiled napkins out of Steve’s hand. “Come on, Miss Manners. Let’s go play grab-ass indoors.”

 

 

Bucky had, upon moving into the Tower, spent a good chunk of her back army pay on sex toys. 

“Do I have to get my smelling salts?” she’d said when Steve boggled at her veritable treasure chest of goodies.

“What you have to get is on the bed,” Steve had said, and was pleased to find Bucky’s eyes widening for once.

So, they’d done this before. This wonderful, filthy, delicious _thing_ where Bucky had a lurid purple phallus protruding from between her legs, the one bulby end lodged inside her and vibrating while she pushed him face first into the bed and buried her face in his ass. 

Steve shouted into the pillow when he felt the flat of Bucky’s tongue drag wet and firm over his hole. The Tower’s soundproofing had been a revelation, and he and Bucky had taken to it with verve. 

Bucky spreading his cheeks and sucking on his asshole made Steve squirm and push back into the pressure. It inspired a hot, urgent feeling, curled around the base of his spine and making blood pump quick and hard to his cock, his hole. It felt _exquisite_ , but there was no relief — the tip of Bucky’s exploring tongue only whet his desire further. He rocked back into her face and shoved a hand under himself to wrap around his penis. He found it slick and aching, and he moaned.

“Jesus Christ, you’re a handsome motherfucker,” Bucky said when she rose up. Her voice was husky and low, the voice of the sergeant she once was. Steve shuddered to hear it, cock jumping. “Who told you you could be this handsome, hmm?” She steadied him, false hand on his hip, and slid her middle finger into his asshole. It met no resistance, slick with spit and grasping for it, and Steve let out a keening groan.

“Don’t have to — sound so mad about it,” he said, panting. He shifted and wriggled until her whole finger was inside him. She crooked it and his vision whited out.

“I am mad,” she said. “Totally furious. Incandescent with anger.”

“Oh God, Bucky, _please_.”

“I got you,” Bucky said. She pulled her finger out until only the tip was still inside him, squirted a generous dollop of lube on him, and added another. She fucked him with two fingers until he was writhing, heart hammering, cock soaking the sheets, and then added another. The push and fill and stretch of it made Steve feel delirious, voice hoarse, body straining.

Bucky nudged him so he lay half on his side, twisted in the bedding. She pushed one of his knees up and levered herself over him. He opened bleary eyes, slack-jawed with pleasure, and met her gaze as she pressed the blunt, lubricated nub of the toy against his hole.

“Bear down,” she said. He clutched at the sheets with one hand, cupped a breast with the other. Bucky pushed inside slowly, mouth open, the sweep of her lashes thick and dark against her flushed skin. He squeezed her nipple, and she sighed and pressed forward. The false cock slid inside him. He cried out as she fully seated the toy inside him, the toy buzzing away. Her eyelids fluttered and her chest heaved as she pulled back and thrust back in, bumping his prostate along the way. “Fuck, yes,” she said. She braced herself on Steve’s thigh and started a steady rhythm of deep, quick thrusts.

She rose and fell above him, inside him, a goddess shining with exertion. He tried to keep his eyes open, tried to burn the memory of her so free and beautiful in this moment with him into his brain, but the pleasure had made a supernova of his body, bright and good. He laid a hand on her waist and used the other to jerk at his cock. He couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.

“Steve, fuck, look at you,” Bucky gasped. “I’m gonna come, fuck, Steve—”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Yeah, come on.” He gripped his cock tight and sped up his strokes.

Bucky grunted as her thrusts became shorter, grinding her clitoris into Steve’s ass, the toy buzzing hard and buried deep. She let out a loud, reverberating shout and shook as she climaxed, and the sight of her, glistening and shuddering as she came against him, made the coil of electricity behind his balls and through his ass tighten until he came himself with a silent, choked-off scream. He arched into the penetration, head thrown back as semen spurted up his chest and hit his chin. Aftershocks made him boneless.

Bucky moved his leg around herself and he let his legs fall open. She covered him with her body and licked his come off his skin. She pressed sucking kisses into his chest, his shoulders, his neck, his chin. As the haze of orgasm dissipated, he whimpered at the fullness in his ass, and he pushed at her hip. She drew back and pulled out of him slowly; he hissed at the squidgy wetness, the feeling of being suddenly empty.

Through his lashes he watched her pull the toy from her body and turn it off. She pushed the fingers of her right hand through her curls to rub again at her clit and sighed. She rose up, straddled him and said, “I think I could come again.”

Steve smiled lazily and tapped his chest. She grinned wide and straddled him, knees to his ears, and he took the ocean scent of her deep into his lungs. He ran his hands over her thighs and gripped her hips before sealing his mouth over her clit. She moaned and began to undulate against his mouth, slicking his face. He held her steady and worked his tongue in a relentless rhythm that had her gasping above him in under three minutes. Her thighs tightened and she stilled before giving out a wail and pushing into his mouth one last time. A burst of liquid left her and he lapped it up before she slid off him with a short, breathy laugh.

“I taught you _good_ ,” she said. Steve wiped his face on his shoulder and pulled in her for a kiss. 

“I feel like this is a dream I’m having,” he said when they parted. “I could make you come all day.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that someday,” Bucky said. Her eyes were hazy, and she wore a dazed grin.

“Gotta clean up.” 

Bucky hummed in response, eyelids falling shut. Steve got up and went to the bathroom. When he came back, she was half asleep, and he fitted himself into his usual position, his back to her chest, their legs entangled. She grunted and wriggled irritably until she sat up and took her prosthesis off. She knocked it off the bed and came back to settle in behind him. She snuffled into his neck. He gripped her fingers tight.

 

 

Steve was roused from a light slumber by Bucky taking away the warmth of her body and going into the closet.

“Buck?” he said, twisting around to look at her. 

She stood up straight, bare breasts tightening in the air outside the warmth of their bed. She had a little box in her hand, and her tells were out in full force — a tension about her shoulders, a tightness around the corners of her mouth, stump drawn in close against her body.

“Hey,” Steve said softly. He pushed the covers away and swung his legs over the side of the bed so he could sit. “Are you okay?”

She just nodded, eyes bright. She took a breath and stepped closer to him. She opened the box and revealed a simple band in a dark, beveled metal. Steve’s breath left his body.

“It’s not made of a tank, or anything,” Bucky said. “But I figured you’d get a kick out of having a ring made of the same stuff as your shield. I had to ask Stark though, and he’s already been insufferable about the whole thing, I couldn’t wait any longer or he was gonna propose to you himself. How Pepper does it, I don’t know, man, I mean I get exhausted spending just an hour in the field with that guy—”

Steve yanked her into his lap and covered her mouth with his. He kissed her like it was V-day. He kissed her like the Dodgers had just won the World Series. He kissed her like a man who’d been asking his girl to marry him for seventy-five years and had just had his suit accepted.

Bucky broke away, panting. Her arm was around his neck, and her knees were on either side of his hips, and her color was high. The ring in its box had tumbled somewhere on the floor.

“So?” Bucky said lightly. “Is that a yes?”

“Um.” Steve grimaced. “No?”

“Steve.” There was a dangerous glint in Bucky’s eye.

“I can wear the ring!” Steve blurted. “I can be yours. I mean. I _am_ yours, always have been, but… I can’t. Make it official. Just yet.”

Bucky slid off him abruptly. Steve’s exposed penis, half-hard just a moment ago, shriveled against his body. Bucky put her hand on her hip and glowered down at him.

“Are you serious right now, Rogers?”

“Buck—”

“You have asked me to marry you approximately one million times, and now you’re saying no to me? Oh my God, is this some weird man thing? Is it because _I_ asked _you_ and now you don’t know where your balls went?”

“No! No, it’s nothing like that!” Steve reached out for her, but she jerked away. “Can I explain? Please?”

Bucky raised her chin and her eyebrows and fixed him with a withering look. 

“Okay.” Steve made a placating gesture, both hands raised. “Okay, so. You know Phil?”

“Steve.”

“Of course you know Phil, Jesus.” Steve shook himself. “He could marry Clint right here in New York tomorrow if he wanted, or Iowa, or Vermont, or Washington. But that’s not enough, you know? It’s… it’s not enough for some people to have freedoms and privileges others don’t. Phil couldn’t marry Clint and feel good about it when other people just like them can’t have that in Idaho or New Mexico or Alaska. And… and I can’t either, Buck. I want to be Mr. James Buchanan Barnes more than anything, always have, but I can’t stand up and marry the love of my life when my best friend can’t.”

When he was finished, he looked up and found that Bucky was staring at him. The ire had left her face, and in its place was the look that had always made Steve, 5’5” and about to be swept away by a stiff breeze, feel like a giant. 

“‘Until we are all free, we are none of us free,’” she said.

“Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it.” 

“Emma Lazarus.”

“She’s a smart lady.”

“Well,” Bucky said, “I always did like living in sin.”

Steve gave a weak laugh. Bucky settled herself on his lap again, arm wound his neck and chin in his hair. Steve tucked his face into the space above her breasts and squeezed her tight. 

“Nothing has to change either way,” Steve said. “We’re still us. Marriage is just… a promise, and I made that promise to you a long time ago.” 

Bucky carded her fingers through Steve’s hair. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of her.

“You know,” she said, “now that I think on it, if you’d given me any other answer, you wouldn’t be the guy I’ve loved since I was fifteen.” 

Steve tipped his head back to look at her. She smiled down at him softly.

“Fifteen, huh?” Steve said. 

“You were cleaning up little Tommy Whitaker’s hands after Sister Mary Magnus got him with the switch. He was crying something awful, but you just told him what a brave fella he was and gave him tips on getting away with stuff.”

Steve laughed. “I don’t remember that at all.”

“I looked at you and I said to myself, ‘that’s the guy for me.’”

“Sure took your sweet time afterward.”

“You were my best friend,” Bucky said. “It was easier to let it lie.”

“I love you,” Steve said. Bucky set her forehead against his.

“Yeah I know, you big sap.” 

They sat for a while, tangled in each other and breathing the same air. 

Then, Steve asked, “Do you ever think about what would have happened if things had turned out different?”

“Like what?”

“Like if we’d survived the war.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we did survive the war.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t play that game, Steve. Things happened how they happened. You can’t sit around going over other scenarios in your head. You miss a lot of the good stuff that way. Just… just be here with me.” She pressed her lips to his forehead, his temple, both his eyes.

“I am,” he whispered. He hated every moment the Red Room had stolen from her, hated that she had been forced to be a foot soldier in an unjust war, hated that her body and mind had been violated so thoroughly. What he hated most of all was that he was so pathetically grateful for the chance to be with her again, he couldn’t hate the Red Room as fiercely as he should, for her, for Natasha, for the hundreds of girls like them. He couldn’t help but be glad it had brought them to this moment even though Bucky had been the one to pay the price. He hated _himself_ more than he could ever hate the Red Room. 

“Hey,” Bucky said. “Don’t do that. Be here with me, Steve.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said into her skin, breath harsh. 

Bucky guided him down onto the bed. She laid him on his side and plastered herself to his back, knees tucked into his. She pressed her face into the nape of his neck and linked their fingers on his stomach.

“Tell me,” she said when his breath had calmed and synched up with hers. “Tell me about this life we would have had, if things had been different.”

Steve squeezed her hand in his, took a breath, and started speaking.

—

After the war, Steve went back to art school. Bucky joined SSR alongside Howard and Peggy. They got married in uniform. Peggy and Helen exchanged rings. Steve became one of most sought-after comics artists of the age. Howard, Bucky and Peggy started SHIELD. Bucky and Steve adopted two adorable orphans from St. Augustine’s, and by the time Tony and Phil were born, Bucky and Steve were grandparents five times over. They never bothered to retire.

They lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn. They were happy.

—

“That’s ridiculous, Steve.”

“Hey, you asked.”

“I would retire as soon as I turned sixty-five. Live out the rest of my days having girly drinks and ogling my husband.”

Steve snorted and snuggled back further, fitting his bum into her pelvis. He felt her lips at the base of his neck. She tightened her grip around his waist. 

“You know that’s not us, right?” she said, voice low as if not to disturb him. “We’re not those kinds of people — the house and the kids and the not getting shot at. Better or worse, Steve, you and me, we’re warriors.”

“Buck. I know.”

“And the truth of it is, you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Steve turned over and cupped Bucky’s cheek in his hand. He rubbed his thumb over her cheekbone, her mouth. Her eyes were black in the dark of the room.

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

Tomorrow, there would be something to avenge, and they’d get into their uniforms and protect the city. Afterward, jumped up on adrenaline and endorphins, they’d fuck upright against the sliding doors to the balcony. But for now, they were just a man and a woman in love, with all the history of that love yawning between them, its joys and hurts laid bare. Steve kissed Bucky soft and slow, and with the taste of her on his tongue, he forgot everything but the warmth blooming in his chest.

On the floor beside the bed, a vibranium ring lay waiting. 

 

**End**

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2013 Marvel Big Bang. See the art by siehn [here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1005980)
> 
> I owe my thanks, as ever, to [aftersoon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aftersoon/pseuds/aftersoon) and [sweetestdrain](http://sweetestdrain.livejournal.com/) for taking to their beta and cheerleading duties so gracefully, and for coddling my neuroses, always.
> 
> This story does have a short companion piece coming soon, and two more shorts planned for the series. All these shorts are bonuses that take place during this, the meat of the story arc, so there is no need to fear being left hanging at any point. Stay tuned for updates!


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